AfD on health and care

The AfD wants to secure outpatient care by making it financially easier for doctors to set up practice and by helping municipalities recruit doctors. Budget caps on treatments would be dropped, and clawback claims and cost-efficiency audits curbed.

Many doctors' offices cannot find a successor. The AfD wants to help doctors open or take over a practice. There should be money for this. Doctors should no longer have fixed spending limits for treatments. Towns and villages should also get help from the state.

The platform points to more than 2,500 physician, 2,700 dentist and 500 psychotherapist positions that need to be refilled in the coming years. Financing options are to be taught during medical school. Municipalities would receive state money to attract doctors and set up medical care centers (Medizinische Versorgungszentren); the AfD also backs mobile practices. Private investors with no connection to patient care would be excluded from funding. Practitioners should not be restricted in their treatment by budgets or by fear of repayment demands.

The AfD wants to cut administrative work in health care substantially so that more time is left for patients. Digital tools should only be introduced with strict data protection, and the electronic patient record should require prior consent.

Doctors and nurses should have less paperwork. Then they have more time for patients. New computer programs should really make work easier. The electronic patient record should only exist if the patient says yes first. Patient data should not be stored in one central place.

Duplicate documentation is to be avoided. Every new digital tool would be tested in advance to see whether it reduces administrative work; the costs would be borne by the responsible institutions and authorities, not by practices or hospitals. According to the platform, introduction requires full data protection and safeguarding medical confidentiality. The AfD rejects central storage of patient data because of the risk of misuse. For the electronic patient record, today's opt-out system would be replaced by opt-in consent.

The AfD wants to prevent hospital closures and provide more state investment funding for that purpose. A new fund is meant to clear the renovation backlog and absorb deficits at municipal hospitals.

Many hospitals have money problems or have to close. The AfD wants to stop that. The state should give more money to hospitals. A new fund should pay for repairs and upgrades. Towns and counties should be able to keep their hospitals this way.

The platform puts the renovation backlog in the state's hospitals at around one billion euros and blames the state government and the 2025 hospital reform for the situation. It plans a hospital investment and equipment fund, abbreviated KIAF. Municipalities that take over basic-care hospitals from private operators would receive grants from it to reduce deficits. The AfD expects hospitals to become more economically viable as a result and emergency care to remain secure.

The AfD wants to make nursing and medical assistant professions more attractive through higher qualifications and better pay. For doctors, working conditions, pay and work-family balance are to improve so that fewer leave for other countries or other industries.

Nurses and assistants should be able to learn more and earn more. They should take over more tasks from doctors. Doctors should get better working conditions. Work and family should fit together better. Then fewer doctors will move abroad.

Practice assistants and community nurses are to be brought back, especially in structurally weak areas. In hospitals, staff with additional qualifications would take on tasks from physicians. The platform cites around 2,000 doctors leaving Germany each year and a quarter of graduates who do not work clinically. Universities, hospitals and nursing schools should offer childcare, along with part-time models that still allow for training and career development.

The AfD wants to create significantly more places in medical school and replace the high school grade cutoff (Numerus Clausus) with a different admission procedure. The rural doctor scholarship and rural doctor quota are to be extended to more specialties.

The AfD wants more places to study medicine. School grades should no longer decide who gets a place. A new process should check who is suited for the job. Students who later work in the countryside should get a scholarship. A scholarship is money for studying.

The new admission procedure is meant to reflect the demands of the profession more closely. Recipients of a rural doctor scholarship commit to taking over or opening a practice in a rural area. The quota for rural doctors and rural pediatricians would apply to all specialties and, depending on need, to dentists and pharmacists as well. Parents who pay for a medical or dental degree would get more tax relief. More teaching hospitals are meant to make practical training more attractive; the AfD expects fewer high school graduates to study abroad.

The AfD wants to guarantee the legally required ambulance response times statewide and expand emergency rooms as needed. Volunteer first responders are to be given the same status as volunteer fire departments.

An ambulance should arrive within 15 minutes of an emergency call. A suitable hospital should be reachable within 30 minutes. The AfD wants to secure this everywhere in the state. Emergency rooms should be expanded. Volunteer first responders should be treated like volunteer firefighters.

A hospital counts as suitable if it matches the emergency, for example one with a stroke unit for a stroke or a cardiac catheterization lab for a heart attack. According to the platform, these time limits are already not being met in some regions because departments and hospitals have closed. The AfD wants to prevent emergency rooms from being lost to the tiered emergency care system. First responders provide volunteer first aid until the ambulance arrives; municipalities would get incentives to introduce such groups everywhere.

The AfD wants foreign medical degrees and work references to be examined more closely, especially those from non-EU countries. In addition to language certificates, an equivalence exam at the level of German state or specialist exams would be mandatory.

Some doctors studied in other countries. The AfD wants to check their certificates more closely. These doctors should speak German well and prove it. They should also pass an exam like German doctors do. Without proof of language skills, they should not get permission to work.

The party calls for B2 language certificates for general communication and C1 for professional communication. The state office for social affairs, youth and care (LSJV) should no longer issue a professional permit without proof of language skills; such a permit allows medical work under supervision but is not a full license. The AfD argues that language barriers must not impair treatment or coordination among colleagues. Knowledge of the German health care system should be in place from the first day of work.

The AfD wants the state government's COVID measures and their consequences to be investigated. People who suffered health damage from a COVID vaccination are to receive support or compensation, as are their relatives and surviving dependents. Post-vac syndrome is to be recognized as an illness.

The AfD wants to review the state's COVID policy. It asks what harm was done. People harmed by a COVID vaccine should get money or help. Their families should too. Post-vac should count as an illness. Post-vac means health problems after a vaccination.

The review is to cover the health, economic and social effects of the measures. Key areas are the effects on staffing and finances in health care, the vaccine mandate for health care facilities, and the development of children and young people. The platform assumes that lockdowns, quarantine, mask mandates, 2G and 3G access rules and vaccination campaigns caused considerable harm. Researchers are to search systematically for treatments for vaccine-injured people, accompanied by transparent epidemiological studies. The AfD also wants to overcome what it sees as a social divide caused by COVID policy.

The AfD rejects any vaccine mandate and other compulsory medical measures, citing the fundamental right to physical integrity. It wants to prevent international bodies such as the WHO from gaining influence over the state's health policy. It also opposes the new retainer payment for general practitioners.

The AfD does not want any vaccine mandate. All treatment should be voluntary. The WHO should have no say in Rhineland-Palatinate. The WHO is the World Health Organization. Family doctors should not get money for vaccinating many people.

The platform stresses each person's responsibility for their own body. The AfD intends to oppose any effort to give the WHO powers over health policy in Rhineland-Palatinate. The Vorhaltepauschale (a retainer payment for general practitioners) that applies from 2026 is tied to quotas for technical examinations, home visits and vaccinations. The AfD rejects this, arguing that medicine is a liberal profession that must be guided by patients' needs. It regards vaccination quotas as an indirect vaccine mandate that would weaken the trust of vaccine-skeptical patients in their doctors.

The AfD wants more training places in nursing and scholarships tied to several years of work in Rhineland-Palatinate. It rejects the unified nursing training program and wants to return to separate professions. The Landespflegekammer (state nursing chamber) is to be dissolved.

The AfD wants to train more nurses. People who get a scholarship should then work in the state for some years. There should again be separate training for hospital nursing and elder care. The state nursing chamber should be closed.

The number of training places is to match demand, and training is to be thorough and practice-oriented. The AfD wants to improve financial conditions and push for fairer wages. It requires nursing staff to have German skills at B2 level. Instead of the generalist training program, there are to be separate training tracks again for general, pediatric and geriatric nursing. The AfD wants to abolish the state nursing chamber, to which, according to the platform, more than 40,000 nurses must belong.

The AfD wants every pregnant woman to be able to reach a maternity ward within 40 minutes and to have one-to-one care from a midwife. To that end, existing wards are to be kept and new ones built. The number of C-sections is to fall.

Every pregnant woman should reach a maternity ward in 40 minutes. One midwife should care only for her. The AfD wants to keep maternity wards and build new ones. Midwives should get affordable insurance. There should be fewer C-sections.

In addition to maternity wards, birth centers attached to hospitals are to be set up. The AfD calls for affordable professional liability insurance for self-employed midwives. According to the platform, the C-section rate is above 30 percent and rising. It is to be lowered by 15 percent, following the example of Scandinavian countries.

The AfD wants to introduce a care salary that gives financial security to people who look after relatives at home. Home care is to become a central part of the social security system. The platform points out that most people needing care are looked after at home.

Many people care for relatives at home. They get no salary for it. The AfD wants to introduce a care salary. It should give these people enough to live on. Care at home should become more important.

According to the platform, about 205,000 of the more than 241,000 people needing care in the state live at home, mostly looked after by relatives. These caregivers are not paid by the care insurance fund. The care allowance goes to the person needing care and is much lower than the benefits for professional services or nursing homes. The AfD also argues that professional services already cannot meet demand.