Grüne on health and care

The Greens want to secure medical care, especially in rural areas, through "health regions" in which outpatient and inpatient services are planned together. They reject further hospital privatization and want to return hospitals to public ownership where possible.

Rural areas often lack doctors and hospitals. The Greens want to set up health regions. There, doctors' offices and hospitals plan together. Hospitals should no longer be sold to private companies. In an emergency, everyone should reach a hospital quickly.

Municipalities would be able to set up public-interest health and care centers where several professions work together; the state would fund them as pilot projects. For emergencies and births, a hospital should be reachable very quickly, while for plannable, complex procedures quality matters more than travel time, the platform says. Hospital planning would link hospitals more closely with doctors' offices and therapy, care, and rehab services, supported by digitalization. Heat and climate protection would be taken into account when building or renovating hospitals and nursing homes.

The Greens want to strengthen local health departments with more money, a separate pay scale for medical staff, and better digital equipment. They also want to improve prevention and pandemic preparedness.

The Greens say health departments have too little money and staff. They want to give them more money. Doctors there should get their own pay scale. The state should prepare better for pandemics. Prevention should also matter more.

The pandemic framework plan would be revised to include standing crisis teams, scientific advice, pandemic councils, and preventive measures. The State Center for Health would be given more responsibility. Uniform standards and interfaces to the electronic patient record are planned, as are recruitment programs with universities and medical associations. According to the platform, prevention includes sports, nutrition, health literacy, broad vaccination coverage, education campaigns such as on sexually transmitted diseases, and a mental health campaign.

The Greens want to implement the recommendations of the state psychiatry plan. These include more outpatient crisis support, shorter waits for therapy, and fewer involuntary commitments.

People with mental illness need help quickly. The Greens want to offer more help in a crisis. People should not wait so long for therapy. Fewer people should be put in a clinic against their will.

Shorter waits are to be achieved in part through additional, needs-based licenses for psychotherapists to bill public health insurers. Video consultations and other digital services would supplement care. Patients, relatives, and professionals would be involved as equals, and the party wants to counter the stigma of mental illness. Psychotherapy training would be strengthened; the platform rejects "Rasterpsychotherapie" (standardized therapy quotas by diagnosis). An information platform run with municipalities and the associations of statutory health insurance physicians would make it easier to find services.

The Greens want to secure access to medical care for people without health insurance, such as refugees, homeless people, and undocumented people, through an anonymous health voucher. For people with disabilities, an inclusion plan would reduce barriers in the health system.

Some people have no health insurance. For example, people without papers or homeless people. The Greens want to bring in an anonymous health voucher. With it, people can see a doctor without giving their name. People with disabilities should also get better care.

The platform argues that adequate care in case of illness is a human right. Clearing offices, which help determine a person's insurance status, would be set up statewide with secure funding. A cross-ministry inclusion plan would be drawn up with experts and affected people, and accessibility would become a binding requirement in needs planning. Discrimination in the health system would be studied systematically. Awareness of discrimination would become part of training and continuing education in the health professions.

The Greens want health care to take gender into account, strengthen maternity care, and make abortion available close to home. In the platform's view, medicine has so far been geared too much to the male body.

The Greens say medicine often looks mainly at men. They want studies to look at women and men separately. Midwives should get more support. Women should be able to end a pregnancy near where they live.

For state funding in the health sector, data would be collected and analyzed by gender. Midwife-led delivery units and self-employed midwives in underserved rural areas would be supported, and working conditions in maternity care would improve. Voluntary counseling on pregnancy and abortion would be expanded, and abortion would be anchored in medical training and continuing education. The party also advocates interdisciplinary centers for sexual health that build on existing structures and receive reliable funding.

In long-term care, the Greens favor shared housing and outpatient services in the neighborhood over more large nursing homes. They expect the federal government to deliver a "double care guarantee" with capped out-of-pocket costs, and they want to strengthen staffing and training.

Many older people do not want to live in a large home. The Greens want more care in people's own neighborhoods. Care should stay affordable. So there should be a limit on what people pay themselves. Care insurance pays the rest. There should be more care workers.

Outpatient care as well as day, night, and short-term care would be expanded, also to relieve family caregivers. Cities and counties would use binding care needs planning that gives nonprofit and municipal providers priority over large investors. Under the double care guarantee, long-term care insurance covers all costs above the capped personal share; the state intends to take part in the reform due by 2023. Binding staffing-level tools would be fully implemented, training places increased, and more teachers deployed. The party wants to accompany the creation of the nursing chamber in dialogue with unions and associations.

The Greens consider cannabis prohibition unsuitable and want to move quickly on regulated sales to adults in NRW as soon as federal law allows. Addiction counseling, drop-in centers, and supervised consumption rooms would continue to be funded.

The Greens think the ban on cannabis is wrong. Adults should be able to buy cannabis in controlled shops. First the federal government must change the law. Addiction advice centers will keep getting money. Children and teens should get special protection.

The platform argues that minors can currently get cannabis easily on the black market and that adult occasional users are criminalized. Drug policy should rely on self-determination, education about risks, and harm reduction. Besides gambling addiction, the party looks at newer forms such as online addiction; youth services, addiction services, and the health system would cooperate, and transitions between therapies would be improved. Municipalities would get help to keep the locations of counseling centers and consumption rooms secure.