The Federal Minister of Health will receive billions more to fight the pandemic.
(Photo: IMAGO/Political Moments)
Berlin Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) will receive an additional 7.7 billion euros for the fight against the pandemic in the current year. This emerges from a letter from the Secretary of State for Finance, Florian Toncar (FDP), for the Budget Committee of the Bundestag. The paper is available to the Handelsblatt.
The additional funds are justified by over-planned expenditure to deal with the corona pandemic. At four billion euros, the largest item is the financing of corona tests. The Ministry of Health assumes that the tests will continue to be used intensively. So far, according to the Federal Social Security Office, the federal and state governments have spent a total of 9.2 billion euros on tests.
The second largest item of expenditure is the supply surcharge for hospitals that treat corona patients. It is 1.8 billion euros. More money is also needed for vaccinations. Here, the Federal Ministry of Health expects expenditure of 1.5 billion euros.
There are also other items, around 300 million euros subsidy for the health fund, from which the statutory health insurance companies finance their expenses. The Ministry of Health justifies the additional need with the pandemic-related expansion of child sickness benefit.
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The Federal Ministry of Finance wants to approve the Ministry of Health’s application for additional funds. State Secretary Toncar writes that the conditions for approval have been met. The need was “unforeseen” and factually and temporally “inevitable”. “I therefore intend to agree to the overspending of up to 7.73 billion euros,” writes Toncar.
Ministries must apply for additional requirements
In mid-December, the Lauterbach Ministry of Finance had already pledged an additional 2.2 billion euros to buy more vaccine doses. Last summer, the then federal government approved a draft budget for 2022, which envisages expenditure of 26.2 billion euros for the Ministry of Health. However, the budget was not passed by Parliament due to the federal elections.
Currently, the ministries are therefore only allowed to spend money within the framework of the old budget. Additional requirements must be requested from the Ministry of Finance, as Lauterbach has now done. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) wants to bring a new draft budget for the current year and for 2023 into the cabinet next Wednesday.
More: Lauterbach reports a minus of 5.8 billion euros for the health insurance companies