Obligation to vaccinate: Dispute about the monitoring required by health insurance companies – Then24
The authors of a planned corona vaccination law are still looking for a way to monitor compliance with the possible vaccination obligation and to identify those who refuse to vaccinate. Since a national vaccination register is still not in sight, the deputies of the “traffic light” coalition want to make the health insurance companies responsible for the control.
Among others, AOK boss Carola Reimann supports this idea. In an interview for the Doctors newspaperwhich was published on February 1, she suggested linking each vaccination against Corona with the insurance number:
“In the case of other vaccinations, vaccination data is also linked to routine data from the health insurers. In this way, the health insurers would be able to support proper corona vaccination surveillance. This is not rocket science, but could be implemented relatively quickly and with little effort.”
Although the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) prohibits health insurers from processing personal health data without a specific legal mandate, it allows exceptions for “reasons of public interest in the field of public health”. Reimann sees just such an exception in the “fighting of the COVID 19 pandemic and its side effects definitely” as given.
This suggestion was gratefully taken up by the initiators of the mandatory vaccination law in the Bundestag, especially since other ideas have proven to be unenforceable or ineffective. The health authorities are already overwhelmed with the control of the facility-related vaccination obligation that will come into force on March 15, while random checks, as have been discussed by the health ministers of the federal states, are considered insufficient.
The deputy SPD parliamentary group leader Dirk Wiese told the regional newspapers of the Funk media group on Thursday that they wanted to implement this plan:
“We want to go through the health insurance companies. From our point of view, this makes sense, is legally permissible and also feasible.”
The parliamentary group wants to publish the draft law “before next week”. These proponents in the Bundestag are planning to pass a general vaccination requirement from October 1st from the age of 18 in the second half of March in the German Bundestag. The health insurance companies should then inform their policyholders, query the vaccination status via a vaccination portal and save it.
Then the health insurance companies should report those people to the municipalities who have not submitted proof of vaccination, explained the FDP MP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann. The health authorities would then offer a vaccination appointment. Anyone who lets it pass must expect a fine if they do not get vaccinated within four weeks.
In addition to Strack-Zimmermann and Wiese, the SPD MPs Heike Baehrens and Dagmar Schmidt, the Greens Janosch Dahmen and Till Steffen and Katrin Helling-Plahr from the FDP are involved in the controversial proposal.
On the other hand, the Central Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds (GKV) gave this initiative by some MPs from the SPD, FDP and the Greens a clear rejection, like the news agency dpa reports. A GKV spokesman told the newspapers Funk media group on Thursday that the health insurance funds were ready to fulfill their mandate to inform and advise the insured. On the other hand, they do not see themselves as responsible for monitoring a possible general obligation to vaccinate against the corona virus:
“The enforcement and control of a possible legal obligation to vaccinate, on the other hand, would be the task of the state”said the announcer loudly dpa.
more on the subject – Survey: That’s what the members of the Bundestag say about compulsory vaccination
(RT/dpa)
