Cancellation of traffic light advance
Funds refuse to check compulsory vaccination
02/10/2022 12:46 p.m
Several deputies of the traffic light coalition have in mind a general obligation to vaccinate from the age of 18, which would be organized together with the statutory health insurance companies. But their umbrella organization does not see checking the vaccination status of the insured as a task for the health insurance companies.
The statutory health insurance companies do not see themselves as responsible for monitoring a possible general obligation to vaccinate against the coronavirus. This initiative by a group of MPs from the SPD, Greens and FDP, who are preparing a draft law, was clearly rejected by the Central Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds (GKV). A GKV spokesman told the newspapers of the Funke media group that the health insurance funds were ready to fulfill their mandate to inform and advise the insured. “The enforcement and control of a possible legal obligation to vaccinate, on the other hand, would be the task of the state.”
SPD parliamentary group leader Dirk Wiese told the Funke newspapers that they wanted to keep the plan. “We want to go through the health insurance companies. From our point of view, this makes sense, is legally permissible and also feasible.” The parliamentary group wants to publish the draft law “before next week”.
The MPs intend to pass a general vaccination requirement from the age of 18 in the second half of March in the Bundestag, which will apply from October 1st. The health insurance companies should then inform their policyholders, query the vaccination status via a vaccination portal and save it. Then the cash registers should report those people to the municipalities who have not submitted proof of vaccination, explained the FDP MP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann.
The health authorities would then offer a vaccination appointment. Anyone who lets it pass must expect a fine if they do not get vaccinated within four weeks. In addition to Strack-Zimmermann and Wiese, the SPD MPs Heike Baehrens and Dagmar Schmidt, the Greens Janosch Dahmen and Till Steffen and Katrin Helling-Plahr from the FDP were involved in the proposal.