German health minister: Statutory insurance shouldn't fund homeopathy

Germany's health minister wants to abolish funding of homeopathic treatments by the country's statutory health insurance system.

"Homeopathy makes no sense as a health insurance benefit," wrote Health Minister Karl Lauterbach on X, formerly Twitter. "The foundation of our policies must be scientific evidence."

"We also cannot fight climate change with dowsing rods," he quipped.

Homeopathic medicines are usually based on plant, mineral and animal substances that are massively diluted and packaged in the forms pills, creams, gels and tablets.

The scientific consensus is that homeopathic treatments have no proven health outcomes for a patient beyond placebo effects.

As reported by Der Spiegel news magazine on Wednesday evening, Lauterbach's ministry sent a recommendation paper to other ministers setting out where savings can be made in Germany's statutory health insurance scheme.

According to the report, it states: "Services that have no medically verifiable benefit must not be financed from contribution funds."

It continues: "For this reason, we will remove the option for health insurance companies to include homeopathic and anthroposophic services in their statutes, thereby avoiding unnecessary expenditure by health insurance companies."

Lauterbach had already said in October 2022 that he was considering cancelling homeopathy as a health insurance benefit. "Although homeopathy is not significant in terms of expenditure, it has no place in a science-based healthcare policy," he told Der Spiegel at the time.