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Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD): “The argument is no more differentiated than the AfD.”
Photo:
Emmanuele Contini / IMAGO
The 16 hospital companies in the federal states criticized Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) in an open letter.
Its equation of the German Hospital Society (DKG) with the AfD's argument is the "low point" of a "continuing defamation of the German Hospital Society and its high-ranking representatives," the document says.
Last Thursday, Lauterbach posted photos of an as yet unpublished DKG poster campaign on the X platform.
For example, the pictures showed a crying baby and the slogan: "If Lauterbach continues like this, there will soon be no more children here." The health minister wrote that such a campaign was intended to unsettle patients.
»The argument is no more differentiated than the AfD.
We are working day and night to avert hospital deaths with major reform."
In their letter, the state hospital companies that belong to the DKG are now calling on Lauterbach to distance himself from the accusation and to enter into a “constructive dialogue”.
"Your attempt to silence and discredit your critics of the hospital reform by equating the arguments of the German Hospital Society with that of a party that is partly classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is a damage to democratic coexistence in Germany," it says with regard to the minister.
The hospital companies feel that Lauterbach has ignored him in his hospital reform and, according to their own statements, fear that further clinics could find themselves in dire straits.
After a long political standstill, Lauterbach was recently able to record a success: With regard to the so-called Transparency Act, a cornerstone of the project, the mediation committee of the Bundestag and Bundesrat reached an agreement.
A vote in the state chamber is planned for March 22nd.
According to the law, an online directory should show which hospital offers which services.
Sol