I In general, it is basically futile to pick out individual points, because the whole perspective is skewed. The commission chair Wolfgang Greiner has put it nicely when he said the aim is to initiate a “return to revenue-oriented politics.” The guiding idea, therefore, is the balance sheet, not the need. It is only unclear what Wolfgang Greiner means by return: the idea that the health of the population must be accounted for has determined political decisions since the 1990s.
One of the recommendations of the cutback commission is the scrapping of homeopathic treatments altogether. That sounds sensible at first glance, because what demonstrably does nothing should also not be paid for in solidarity. Beyond the taunts and the debates about homeopathy that are not always expressed with goodwill, the question arises: Why does this quackery exist at all?
When you ask health insurers why they have paid for homeopathic treatments so far, they usually give one reason: because they are popular. And from a financial standpoint, there isn’t much against it: the expenditures stay in the per‑mille range.
The share of homeopathic remedies, measured against the total pharmaceutical market, is roughly 1.3 to 1.5 percent. In 2023, according to the research firm IQVIA, 45 million homeopathic medicines were dispensed in pharmacies nationwide. The cost factor is therefore rather negligible.
Perceiving Patients as People
Nevertheless, the question remains: why is this kind of treatment so popular. In 2019, the chair of the homeopathic physicians, Cornelia Bajic, chose the elegant formulation that homeopathy is “narratively based” in contrast to conventional medicine. That means factors irrelevant to studies such as empathy, time, and attentiveness play a far larger role in the homeopathic context. In other words: it’s nonsense, but you can chat.
After all, you go to a doctor differently than to a car mechanic. Perceiving patients as people and granting them understanding is not a core competency of conventional, fact-based medicine in times of cost pressure and time shortages. Its goal too often seems to be the restoration of people’s functional ability.
Which doctor, which physician, has time to speak with a patient for up to 90 minutes? (A homeopathic doctor dedicates this time to an initial consultation.)
There is a need here that goes beyond concrete effectiveness. Homeopathy fills this gap; it is itself only a symptom of a dysfunction in the medical apparatus. Simply cutting costs here without recognizing this need is basically just tinkering with the balance sheets of the machine called the human being.
To match that, it also fits that from the first of April savings will be made for practicing psychotherapists: the cuts in fees amount to 4.5 percent. This increases the incentive to take on more private patients; otherwise it would not be financially worthwhile. So one could say that the expert commissions are indeed plugging holes, and one of them is the listening ear in medicine.
