The Federal Cartel Office in Bonn has warned most of the providers of medical aids such as walkers or prostheses in Germany because of alleged price fixing.
The providers, who came together in a working group, would have demanded uniform price surcharges from the health insurance companies "at the latest" from September 2021 "and in many cases could also enforce them," the authority said on Wednesday.
According to preliminary investigations, the formation of this consortium is “incompatible with the ban on cartels”.
According to the information provided, the working group included the Federal Guild Association for Orthopedic Technology, the providers Egroh, Cura-San, Rehavital, Reha-Service-Ring and Sanitätshaus Aktuell - they represented around 80 percent of the locations of the rehabilitation-technical aids nationwide.
The working group was thus able to act as a quasi-monopolist in their joint negotiations with the health insurance companies, the cartel office explained.
The providers justified the price surcharges with the effects of the corona pandemic, for example with increased delivery and raw material costs.
"From the point of view of the office, this justification does not apply if the surcharges are demanded as a lump sum and without factual differentiation for practically all products and services offered," said the Cartel Office.
The price surcharges charged were no longer calculated on the basis of real cost increases in relation to performance, but were largely decoupled from the services provided by the providers.
The warning issued on Wednesday is an intermediate step that gives those affected the opportunity to comment.
At the end of the procedure, the Cartel Office can prohibit antitrust behavior and impose certain obligations on those affected.