SURVEY: GP-2025/3: AOK BW

In some health policy projects, the failure of the traffic light coalition prevented worse outcomes, such as the draft of the Healthy Heart Act, which would have significantly curtailed preventative measures. We also needn't mourn the Pharmacy Reform Act or the Health Digital Agency Act. However, the Health Care Strengthening Act missed an important opportunity for sustainable structural changes in the outpatient care landscape. Forward-looking approaches from earlier drafts, such as health regions and primary care centers, were deleted during the process. These would have improved working conditions, strengthened interdisciplinary collaboration, and provided access to intersectoral care. In view of the ever-increasing staff shortages in nursing, the Nursing Competence Act would have strengthened the autonomy of professional nursing and thus created an attractive framework. The planned strengthening of the role of municipalities and prevention in the context of long-term care needs are also important starting points that must be pursued further. A reform of emergency care is also long overdue, with the establishment of "Medical Emergency Rescue" as a separate segment in the German Social Code (SGB V). In the future, not only transport to hospitals, but also patient management and emergency medical care could be reimbursed as services provided by statutory health insurance funds. However, the sword of Damocles hangs over all these issues: the financing of solidarity-based health and long-term care insurance: Like previous governments, the failed "traffic light" coalition failed to implement sustainable and structural reforms. The most urgent task of the next federal government must be to stop the spiral of higher contributions in health and long-term care insurance.