In the dispute over the billing of the so-called citizen tests, Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) has reached an agreement with the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV).
As the Ministry of Health and the KBV announced on Monday evening, the Associations of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians will continue to receive the accounts from the test centers and make payments.
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The new agreement stipulates that the data will then be passed on to the federal government, that the tests and results will be checked for plausibility and that anomalies will be reported to the regulatory authorities of the municipalities.
Both sides emphasized that nothing will change in the new rules for citizen tests. Since Thursday, the citizen tests, which were previously free of charge for everyone, have only been available for certain groups such as children up to five years of age, pregnant women or visitors to hospitals and nursing homes without additional payment.
Normally, a deductible of three euros has to be paid for a quick test. The Corona Test Ordinance stipulates who is entitled to what.
The National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, which is responsible for billing the tests, had criticized the rules as too bureaucratic and announced that it would no longer bill and pay out the citizen tests in the future.
The Associations of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians “could not be responsible for making clear payments on bills whose correctness they cannot begin to verify,” Lauterbach said in a letter.
KBV boss Andreas Gassen had even called for a complete cessation of the Corona citizen tests. “These nonsensical tests must be abolished,” he told the “Bild” newspaper. “They are far too expensive, the bureaucratic effort is huge and the epidemiological significance is zero.”
On Monday, the KBV now said that after the agreement with Lauterbach it was now “clarified” that the associations of statutory health insurance physicians would not have to check the new eligibility requirements.
It is crucial that they are “neither responsible for cases of fraud that are based on false or falsified information from those tested or test centers, nor are they held responsible for them afterwards”.
