Saturday 29th May 2021
Suspected fraud at test centers
SPD accuses Spahn of management failure
Corona test sites are said to have incorrectly billed free citizen tests according to a media report. The public prosecutor’s office for white-collar crime has now started investigations. Health Minister Jens Spahn is now in the line of fire.
In view of the suspicion of billing fraud in private corona test sites, the SPD attacked Health Minister Jens Spahn. The First Parliamentary Managing Director of the SPD parliamentary group, Carsten Schneider, said: “After the masks, now the rapid tests. The management failure in the Ministry of Health has assumed unacceptable proportions.” Spahn ignored warnings and advice from MPs of the coalition factions for the test conditions. “He is responsible for the responsible use of taxpayers’ money and must stop self-service immediately.”
The health policy spokeswoman for the CDU / CSU parliamentary group, Karin Maag, said: “You can’t rule out criminal energy anywhere. However, I haven’t found any reliable figures yet.” Since the centers would have to keep the documents, they assume that the federal states will at least randomly check the number of billed cases and the billing documents received by the associations of statutory health insurance physicians. “If this should result in irregularities, specific cases must of course be investigated.”
Investigations in the Ruhr area against two operators
According to research by the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, NDR and WDR, significantly more tests are billed to the statutory health insurance associations in many places in Corona test centers than were actually carried out. The report points to the lack of control on the part of the authorities. The public prosecutor’s office for white-collar crime in Bochum has meanwhile started investigations against two persons in charge of a company based in Bochum that operates test centers at several locations.
As the public prosecutor’s office confirmed, business premises and private apartments in the Ruhr area have already been searched. Documents were also confiscated. The authority did not want to give the name of the suspicious company.
The Federal Ministry of Health referred to the possibility of subsequent controls on Friday. The federal government’s low-threshold test strategy has led to a rapidly growing number of new test centers in recent weeks. The federal government transfers 18 euros to the test centers for each rapid antigen test carried out. The data required to control the correct provision of services must be kept until December 31, 2024.
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