AfD on health and care

The AfD wants to raise investment grants for Berlin's hospitals substantially and replace billing by flat rates per case with a different payment system. The platform cites the risk of insolvencies and closures and a lack of money for buildings, technology and staff.

The AfD wants to give Berlin's hospitals more money. The money is for buildings and equipment. Today hospitals get a fixed sum for each case. The AfD wants to change that. The new payment system should mean less paperwork.

Investment grants are to follow actual need and rise noticeably. In place of flat rates per case, individual hospitals in Berlin would sign payment agreements with the social insurance providers that reflect treatment needs, specialization and economic indicators. Standardized workflows and digital tools are meant to ease the load on staff rather than create more documentation. The platform also calls for inpatient and outpatient hospital capacity across the city, especially for infants and small children.

The AfD wants to lift budget caps for doctors' practices and pay for each service individually. More university places, licensing areas based on city districts and after-hours practices are meant to shorten waiting times and spread care more evenly.

Many people wait a long time to see a doctor. The AfD wants doctors to be paid for every treatment. Each district should get an urgent-care practice. There should be more places to study medicine. Doctors should decide freely how to treat patients.

Practices would no longer have to provide unpaid treatment once their budget is used up. Licensing of doctors would again follow Berlin's districts so that practices are spread more evenly. In each district, an urgent-care practice run by the association of statutory health insurance physicians would handle acute but non-life-threatening cases and relieve hospital emergency rooms. The platform wants more university places for medicine and pharmacy instead of recruiting doctors abroad, and criticizes the cut at the Charité. The AfD rejects requirements such as a vaccination quota for doctors as an intrusion on freedom of treatment.

The AfD wants to bring most drug manufacturing back to Germany and to countries it considers safe, and to require wholesalers to hold stocks. Pharmacies are to be put on a sounder economic footing through simpler billing and better pay.

Some medicines are often not available. The AfD wants more medicines to be made in Germany. Wholesalers should keep a stock for two months. Pharmacies should have less paperwork. They should also get more money for giving advice.

Wholesalers would have to store important medicines in at least the amount needed on average over two months. Pharmacy billing is to become simpler and less bureaucratic. Pay is to reflect the growing need for patient advice and give pharmacies a viable future. The platform points to supply shortages, a lack of young pharmacists and competition from mail-order sales of prescription drugs.

The AfD wants to strengthen care at home through a higher Pflegegeld (care allowance) and to fund new nursing home places with state money. The platform cites the growing number of people needing care, inflation and rising out-of-pocket costs.

Many people are cared for at home by their family. The AfD wants to pay a higher care allowance for this. The allowance should go up by 23 percent. Each new nursing home place should get 40,000 euros. Welfare offices should decide on requests faster.

The care allowance is to rise by 23 percent and be aligned with what outpatient care services receive. Relief options for family caregivers are to be presented clearly. Welfare offices would have to tell care services within one month of an application for care assistance whether costs will be covered. Every new nursing home place that meets modern standards would receive a 40,000 euro subsidy. Berlin's contribution to investment costs is to rise to 300 euros per person in care per month to ease the burden on those affected and their families.

The AfD calls for a review of the COVID period in which those responsible are held to account and people it considers wrongly convicted are rehabilitated. It rejects mandatory vaccination as well as influence by the WHO and the EU over German health care.

The AfD wants to look into the COVID period. It thinks many rules from that time were wrong. Politicians should answer for them. No one should be forced to get a vaccine. The WHO and the EU should not decide on health care in Germany. The WHO is the World Health Organization.

According to the platform, the measures caused health, social and economic harm and were often taken against scientific advice. Laws and guidelines from that time are to be reviewed, repealed where appropriate and folded into a disaster plan. People who refuse vaccination should not be disadvantaged; the AfD invokes physical integrity and self-determination. The platform holds the WHO partly responsible for the measures and rejects direct powers for the WHO and the EU. The aim is national sovereignty over health care.

The AfD rejects a central database for patient data and considers data protection for the electronic patient record inadequate. Patients are to decide who receives their data; emergency data and a living will would be stored on the insurance card.

The AfD does not want a central database for patient data. It thinks the data is not protected well enough. Each patient should decide about their own data. Important emergency data should be on the health insurance card.

The platform accepts that digital tools can ease workflows, avoid duplicate tests and help research. But it sees a risk of a "transparent patient" and criticizes how the electronic patient record has been implemented and how usable it is. Instead of central storage, the AfD favors an emergency data set and a living will held directly on the insured person's card.

The AfD wants public health offices to focus on tasks they can actually fulfill and that serve the general public. The platform cites staff shortages and too many duties.

The public health offices do not have enough staff. The AfD wants them to have fewer tasks. They should do only the most important things. One is protecting people from epidemics. Another is checking food and water.

The platform names disaster protection, epidemic control, the social psychiatric service and hygiene checks on food and water as core tasks. In the AfD's view, the so-called model health office concept matches neither what the offices can do nor what is needed. Things citizens can handle on their own responsibility are not to be a priority.