The health insurance companies do not want to enforce the possible laws on general compulsory vaccination - and allegedly they cannot technically do it at all.

The Central Association of Statutory Health Insurance (GKV) points this out in its statements on two drafts from the ranks of the traffic light coalition, which advocate compulsory vaccination from the age of 18 or 50.

The drafts stipulate that the funds must write to their insured and request them to submit a vaccination certificate or an exemption, which the funds then have to check.

If the evidence is missing, they should report the defaulting customers to the fine offices.

Christian Geinitz

Business correspondent in Berlin

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An individualized cover letter by the deadline of May 15, 2022 "cannot be fulfilled organizationally by the statutory health insurance companies," writes the association.

According to the promulgation of the law, the cash registers would have to print and send up to 1.8 million letters a week: "This cannot be implemented by the internal or external printers." In addition, there are production losses at paper manufacturers, for example due to strikes and the Ukraine war: "It is questionable whether enough paper alone could be obtained by May 15 to write to the approximately 60 million insured persons affected."

Many insured persons cannot be reached

What makes one sit up and take notice is that internal contact management is obviously not in the best of hands.

"There is no guarantee that the statutory health insurance companies have the required current address data for all of their insured persons," admits the GKV association.

This is due to changes of residence and the fact that for co-insured relatives only the address of the actual member is available.

It is therefore foreseeable that the health insurance companies will not be able to reach “a large number of the approximately 60 million affected persons with statutory health insurance” at all.

The GKV is willing to provide information about vaccination and to promote it;

However, it refuses to be misused as a "regulatory authority": "The monitoring of compulsory vaccination is a state task.

Transferring it to health insurance would put a strain on the important relationship of trust between the insured and the insurer.” There are also many technical, legal and data protection difficulties.

The cash registers are not even connected to the Corona warning app with the vaccination status.

Non-digital certificates "would have to be processed further, in some cases by hand".

That drives up staff costs.

QR code as an alternative?

Alternatively, the central association proposes that the registration offices send the citizens a QR code with which they can upload the vaccination certificates to a Bundesdruckerei portal.

This is already taking on sovereign tasks and is specialized in document checks.

The existing federal portal can be used to contact the fine offices in case of doubt.

The Association of Private Insurance (PKV) makes it clear in its statement that there are no confirmations of delivery in the mass procedure by post: “Vaccination opponents will easily evade the obligation to vaccinate by claiming that they have not received the request.”