AfD on health and care

The AfD wants to halt the 2025 hospital reform because it fears hospital closures, especially in rural areas. Hospitals should remain largely a public responsibility rather than being widely privatized.

The AfD wants to stop the 2025 hospital reform. It fears that rural hospitals will close. Hospitals should belong to the state. Companies should not run them for profit.

In the AfD's view, the reform and its law, the KHVVG, do not solve hospitals' problems. It says service groups intrude on the states' authority and standby payments add administrative work. The party instead wants a reform guided by the best possible medical care rather than economic criteria. Securing hospital infrastructure should remain a task of the public sector.

The AfD wants to attract doctors to rural and structurally weak areas with organizational and financial support. Owner-run pharmacies and rehab facilities should be preserved, and wholesalers should keep medicines in stock.

Rural areas lack doctors. The AfD wants to help doctors with money to open a practice there. Pharmacies and rehab clinics should stay. Wholesalers should store key medicines for two months.

The platform regards practices owned by self-employed doctors as the core of outpatient care. Emergency rooms should be reserved for real emergencies. For rehab, a new state association of facilities would negotiate services and payment with health insurers at state level. Mail-order sales of prescription drugs would continue in controlled form, under the same standards as local pharmacies. Wholesalers would have to hold at least two months' supply of essential medicines.

The AfD wants better support for family caregivers and would align the Pflegegeld (care allowance) with what outpatient care services are paid. To tackle staff shortages it relies on better pay, less paperwork and more training. It demands strict checks for professionals from non-EU countries.

Many people care for relatives at home. The AfD wants to give them a higher care allowance. Nurses should earn more and have less paperwork. Doctors and nurses from outside the EU should take a test.

According to the platform, home care is better socially and financially than a nursing home. Against staff shortages the AfD lists performance-based pay, less bureaucracy, binding staffing levels in care-sensitive areas, and more training and use of nursing assistants. It sees gaps in qualifications and language among foreign doctors and nurses. Applicants from non-EU countries would therefore have to pass an exam proving equivalent professional skills.

The AfD wants to abolish every vaccination mandate, citing the fundamental right to physical integrity. Decisions on medical treatment should rest with the individual alone. It also rejects any duty to donate organs.

The AfD wants to end every vaccine mandate. Each person should decide on their own treatment. Nobody should have to donate organs. Alternative healers should also be allowed to keep working.

The platform rules out mandatory mRNA vaccinations and points to experience from the COVID period. In the AfD's view, compulsory organ donation violates the right to self-determination; it cites the churches, which require explicit consent given during a person's lifetime. It is critical of payments of about 20,000 euros per case for organ removal. It wants to preserve the profession of Heilpraktiker (non-physician alternative practitioner) and standardize exam requirements for the training.

The AfD wants a parliamentary committee of inquiry in the state parliament to examine COVID policy. In its view, many measures were unfounded, ineffective or harmful. People who suffered harm as a result should be compensated.

The AfD wants a close look at the COVID period. The state parliament should set up a committee for this. The AfD says many rules were wrong or harmful. People who were harmed should get money.

The platform lists mask rules, lockdowns, school closures, isolation orders and pressure on the unvaccinated as measures that left a mark on many people. The AfD claims decision-makers already knew during the crisis that measures did not work. The review is also meant to prepare for similar events in the future. Those responsible should answer for their decisions, and people who were harmed should receive adequate compensation.

The AfD wants insured people to receive neutral information about the electronic patient record (ePA) after the fact and wants its usage options adapted to patients' needs. People who reject the ePA should be able to store emergency data directly on their health insurance card.

The electronic patient record stores data about medical treatment. The AfD says people were poorly informed about it. It wants neutral information for everyone. People who do not want the record should be able to store emergency data on their insurance card.

The platform criticizes that the ePA was introduced without enough information and with hardly any warning about misuse in case of a data leak. In the AfD's view, the opt-out rule exploits the convenience of many insured people. Medical data should get the highest level of protection. For people without an ePA, the insurance card should be able to hold an emergency data set including a medication plan and a living will.