AfD on health and care

The AfD wants to restrict or entirely block access for children and adolescents to puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormone therapy. It describes these treatments as experimental and cites the German Medical Assembly (Deutscher Ärztetag).

Some children do not feel they belong to their sex. There are drugs that pause puberty. The AfD wants children and teenagers to get these drugs rarely or not at all. The same goes for hormones that change the body toward another sex.

The platform describes gender dysphoria as a disorder whose rise, in the AfD's view, is driven by interest groups and played down by other parties. The party wants to reverse this development. In place of what it calls a glorifying normalization, it demands what it considers a responsible approach to mental disorders.

The AfD wants to raise state investment in hospitals back to 180 million euros, the 2005 level. The platform argues that years of underfunding have left clinics with run-down buildings, outdated equipment and too few staff.

The AfD wants to spend more money on hospitals. The goal is 180 million euros again. That was the amount in 2005. The AfD says many clinics have old buildings and old equipment.

The money is to be earmarked for renovating, modernizing and expanding hospitals in Saxony-Anhalt. The platform names modern medical technology, better working conditions and future-proof infrastructure. The state party backs the federal AfD's call for needs-based hospital financing. It rejects cuts and closures. More broadly, it treats health care as a public responsibility in which economic interests should take second place.

The AfD wants to stop the sale of municipal hospitals to private clinic corporations and give public owners priority. In the platform's view, privatization has harmed care and lowered standards.

The AfD wants to stop selling hospitals to private companies. Towns, counties and the state should come first. The AfD says the sales were a mistake. Some sold clinics should become public again.

A solution other than public ownership should only be considered if public ownership is demonstrably impossible, and then solely in the interest of patient care. Hospitals already privatized are to be returned to the state, municipalities or nonprofit operators where this is medically warranted. The platform calls for a shift away from profit-seeking toward health care as a public responsibility. It pays particular attention to care in rural areas.

The AfD wants to adapt the nationwide hospital reform and its service groups to conditions in Saxony-Anhalt so that small rural hospitals and emergency rooms are not lost. It accepts hospital restructuring only if care in the region does not get worse.

A new federal law changes the rules for hospitals. The AfD fears small rural clinics will lose important departments. It wants to adjust the rules for Saxony-Anhalt. Every region should have a hospital and an emergency room nearby.

Service groups mean hospitals may only offer certain treatments if they have specified departments, minimum staffing and case numbers. The platform sees obstetrics, pediatrics, internal medicine and emergency care at risk and points to long distances and sparse population. Integrated emergency centers should only be set up where they actually improve care; the AfD rejects closing smaller emergency rooms. It supports converting inefficient small hospitals into practice clinics run by office-based doctors, provided at least basic care remains secured. It considers it sensible for individual hospitals to specialize in particular conditions.

The AfD supports regional health centers as a complement to office-based doctors in order to secure care across the state. It is critical of clinic corporations running such centers, arguing they are part of essential public services.

The AfD likes regional health centers. Doctors from many fields work together there. This should secure care across the state. Big clinic companies should preferably not run these centers.

According to the platform, such centers cover many specialties and can offer modern working-time models, which suits the expectations of young doctors. The AfD sees them as partly continuing the model of the Polikliniken (multi-specialty outpatient clinics). It continues to regard self-employed, office-based doctors as a mainstay of care.

The AfD wants emergency medical services to once again meet the Hilfsfrist, the required maximum response time, everywhere in the state. To do so, rescue stations are to be spread out more widely, air rescue expanded and volunteer first responders added to the emergency call system.

Ambulances should reach patients faster. The AfD wants more rescue stations in more places. It also wants more rescue helicopters. Volunteer first responders should help with emergency calls.

According to the platform, the response-time target has not been met across Saxony-Anhalt for a long time. A statewide first responder system is planned to supplement the emergency services. The volunteers are to be digitally connected, legally protected and given technical equipment. The AfD links fast emergency help to the public's sense of safety.

The AfD wants to push at the federal level to replace the DRG system, under which hospitals are paid a flat rate per case. It should give way to a payment model that rewards treatment outcomes and quality.

Hospitals today get a fixed amount for each treatment. This is called the DRG system. The AfD wants to replace it. The new system should reward good treatment. The AfD wants to push for this at the national level.

The new payment system is supposed to create as little red tape as possible. According to the platform, it should no longer set economic incentives that work against good care. Instead, treatment success and quality would be rewarded so that hospitals compete to provide the best patient care. Because this is a matter of federal law, the AfD says it will advocate for the change at the federal level.

The AfD wants to shift health care toward prevention and put it on equal footing with curative treatment, rehabilitation and nursing care. It plans state prevention strategies, rules for meals in daycare centers and schools, and health education in class.

The AfD wants people to stay healthy in the first place. Prevention should matter as much as treatment. Children should get healthy food in daycare and school. Schools should teach how to live in a healthy way. Doctors should look more closely at children before they start school.

The 2016 framework agreement on the Prevention Act is to be put into practice and expanded so that municipalities and counties can draw on existing funds. The state's own strategies would cover nutrition and exercise in addition to conventional medicine. School entry exams would pay closer attention to obesity, lack of exercise and developmental problems, with parents informed early. Statewide guidelines are planned for meals in daycare centers and schools. New diagnostics, digital tools and therapies are to be used where they benefit patients, and the influence of lobbyists is to be limited.

The AfD wants to address the doctor shortage with physicians trained in the state and to stop relying on doctors from abroad. Medical school capacity is to grow by at least 20 percent, and a scholarship program for future rural doctors is to be set up.

Saxony-Anhalt does not have enough doctors. The AfD wants to train more doctors at home. It no longer wants to depend on doctors from other countries. There should be more places to study medicine. Students who get a scholarship must later work in the countryside for ten years.

The platform argues that doctors from abroad are often poorly suited because of language, cultural differences and qualifications that are hard to assess. Universities are to admit more applicants directly, independent of the numerus clausus (grade-based admission cap). For rural areas, a scholarship is planned: the state pays for the degree, and recipients commit to practicing in rural Saxony-Anhalt for at least ten years. Those who do not comply must repay the money with interest.

The AfD wants to set minimum staffing levels for all medical areas, cut documentation requirements and replace the generalist nursing training with separate tracks again. Nurses themselves would vote on whether to create a nursing chamber.

There are not enough nurses. The AfD wants to set a minimum number of nursing staff. Nurses should have less paperwork. There should again be separate training for elder care, hospital care and children's care. Nurses should decide for themselves whether they want a nursing chamber.

Staffing needs are to be derived from the individual care needs of patients and nursing home residents, and minimum levels would be based on that. Less documentation is meant to leave more time for care. According to the platform, the combined training does not meet professional requirements because specializations are lost and the job becomes less attractive. A nursing chamber, a professional body representing nurses, would only be set up if nurses approve it and without mandatory membership.

The AfD wants to strengthen care at home over nursing homes and improve the position of family caregivers, including through a state care allowance (Landespflegegeld) and tax relief. In the party's view, families should again take on more tasks now carried by the state.

The AfD wants more old people to be cared for at home. Families should get more money for this. The state should pay a care allowance. Care within the family should count more toward pensions. Costs in nursing homes should be limited.

The platform lists familiar surroundings, lower costs for the public and family cohesion as advantages of home care. Residents' own contributions to nursing home costs are to be effectively capped. At the federal level, the AfD wants care provided within the family to count more toward pensions than it does now. Additional day-care places are meant to relieve relatives and allow people to stay at home longer.

The AfD wants outpatient palliative services and hospice places to be available in every region of Saxony-Anhalt. In addition, supported dying at home among family is to receive special support.

Very sick and dying people need special help. This is called palliative care. It eases pain when a cure is no longer possible. The AfD wants this care everywhere in the state. People should also be able to die at home with their family.

The platform points to large regional differences in care and a lack of skilled staff, especially in rural areas. Relatives are to receive more counseling, financial support and accompanying help. Dying in one's own home is meant to complement care in hospices and palliative wards.

The AfD wants to set up a parliamentary inquiry committee on COVID policy to name those responsible and hold them accountable. The platform considers the measures of that time, and all penalties for violating them, disproportionate and therefore unjust.

The AfD says the COVID rules were unjust. In its view, the fines and penalties were unjust too. A committee in the state parliament should look into that time. It should say who was responsible. The AfD also wants a plan for dangerous diseases in the future.

According to the platform, fundamental rights were restricted to an unprecedented degree, critics were shut out and unvaccinated people were put under pressure. The AfD also writes that occupational groups were forced to take a vaccine that, in its view, turned out to be ineffective and dangerous. Children are said to have been burdened by masks, isolation and contact restrictions. For a future epidemic involving a virus with high mortality, the party wants to draw up a crisis plan to protect the population.