German health minister denies sickness fund financial crisis
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
German health minister Ulla Schmidt last week refused to accept any responsibility for the tenuous financial situation of the statutory health insurance funds. Commenting on the funds' deficit of some DM6.19 billion ($2.8 billion) for the first nine months of 2001, she said that the figure had now peaked and government forecasts indicated that the funds' would realise a surplus of DM2 billion in the fourth quarter of the year.