Germany
DER SPIEGEL: Bavaria has proposed doubling the salaries of intensive care nurses.
Lauterbach: This would create a large wage gap between nursing staff in the intensive care unit and in other areas. That would be hard to explain. The proposal sounds better than it is.
DER SPIEGEL: Many parents are wondering about Christmas: Should my children really go to school until December 23 and then sit in front of the Christmas tree together with their grandparents on Christmas Eve?
Lauterbach: It is important that children always wear masks at school and are tested. I personally recommend daily testing, definitely in the five days before you leave to see grandma and grandpa.
DER SPIEGEL: A year ago, you and others recommended that schools should close a week before Christmas.
Lauterbach: That is correct, but that is not what the Conference of (State) Education Ministers decided.
DER SPIEGEL: Why don’t you say that daily testing at schools needs to be mandatory?
Lauterbach: I am not the education minister.
DER SPIEGEL: But you are the health minister, who is responsible for combating the pandemic.
Lauterbach: That is why I advise taking the mask requirement in class very seriously. And if possible, testing should be done daily in schools. That would make it possible for classes to continue – even in winter and even with rising incidences.
DER SPIEGEL: Do you worry that you won’t be able to push through your important issues because of the different divisions of responsibilities between the ministries and between the federal government and the states?
Lauterbach: No. I am now working to convince – from a scientific point of view – the cabinet, the conference of state and federal health ministers, and the governors of what will help us most. If it doesn’t always work on this or that issue, I’ll just have to live with it.
DER SPIEGEL: You were a member of the supervisory board of the private Röhn-Klinik hospital. Is that a liability as a minister, something that you wish you hadn’t done in retrospect?
Lauterbach: That was eight years ago. I was also on the supervisory board of municipal hospitals, and I helped reform the largest municipal hospital in Europe, Berlin’s Charité University Hospital. Is it a disadvantage for a minister to have practical experience in the hospital sector?
DER SPIEGEL: The criticism isn’t directed against outstanding reform proposals, but against the money you received for it, and the dependency that creates.
Lauterbach: As I said, I have gone without that money for eight years. I am prepared to discuss what I may have done wrong on the board back then. But I think it’s inappropriate to criticize me for membership alone.
DER SPIEGEL: A long time ago, you developed the idea of a “citizen’s insurance,” which would force the privately insured into the statutory insurance system. Now, you will not be able to implement that idea as a health minister because your coalition partner, the FDP, is against it. Is that a bitter pill for you to have to swallow?
Lauterbach: At the moment, we have other problems. We are in midst of the greatest medical emergency since World War II. I see my core task as that of ending the pandemic in Germany and keeping mortality as low as possible in the waves that lie ahead.
DER SPIEGEL: But don’t you need to be looking ahead right now? The statutory insurance companies are ailing and are additionally burdened by the pandemic. Nursing staffs are burned out. Reforms will be needed urgently.
Lauterbach: A large part of the additional expenditures that are now being provided – to hospitals, for example – are being paid out of tax revenues. These funds remain available. Long-term health insurance reform is a project that is pending, but we wouldn’t be able to do it right now anyway, even if the FDP was asking for it.
DER SPIEGEL: So that means that Germany will continue to have a private health insurance regime during your tenure?
Lauterbach: We will not touch private health insurance during this legislative period. That is written into the coalition agreement.
DER SPIEGEL: Will you still have the chance to see your children at all with your new job?
Lauterbach: Of course. I’m meeting up with my daughter right after this interview.
DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Lauterbach, we thank you for this interview.