Germany's healthcare overhaul cuts homeopathy funding and therapist fees

The Core Problem Isn't the Details—It's the Entire Mindset

Picking apart individual recommendations almost misses the point: the whole perspective is skewed. Wolfgang Greiner, chair of the commission, put it bluntly when he declared the goal was to initiate a "return to revenue-driven policy." The guiding principle, then, is the balance sheet—not patient needs. The only question is what Greiner means by "return": the notion that healthcare must pay for itself has shaped political decisions since the 1990s.

One of the commission's proposals is to eliminate reimbursement for homeopathic treatments outright. At first glance, this seems reasonable—why should the public foot the bill for something proven ineffective? But beyond the mockery and often less-than-charitable debates about homeopathy, a genuine question remains: Why does this pseudoscience persist at all?

Ask health insurers why they've covered homeopathy until now, and they'll usually give one answer: because it's popular. And from a financial standpoint, there's little argument against it—the costs are negligible, amounting to a fraction of a percent of total expenditures.

Homeopathic remedies account for roughly 1.3 to 1.5 percent of the pharmaceutical market. In 2023, according to research firm IQVIA, German pharmacies dispensed 45 million homeopathic products nationwide. The financial impact, in other words, is minimal.

Yet the question lingers: Why is this form of treatment so widely embraced? In 2019, Cornelia Bajic, chair of the Association of Homeopathic Physicians, offered a telling phrase, describing homeopathy—as opposed to conventional medicine—as "narrative-based." Translation: factors irrelevant to clinical studies—empathy, time, and personal attention—play a far greater role. In short: it may be nonsense, but at least there's room for conversation.

A doctor's visit isn't like taking your car to a mechanic. In an era of cost pressure and time constraints, conventional, evidence-based medicine often struggles to treat patients as people—to listen, to understand. Its primary focus too often seems to be restoring functional capacity, not addressing the person behind the symptoms.

What conventional physician has 90 minutes to spare for a single patient? (That's the time a homeopathic practitioner typically dedicates to an initial consultation.)

There's a demand here that extends beyond measurable efficacy. Homeopathy fills that void; it's merely a symptom of a deeper dysfunction in the medical system. Simply cutting funding without acknowledging this need is, in essence, just tinkering with the ledgers of the human machine.

It's no coincidence, then, that as of April 1, outpatient psychotherapists will also face cuts—a 4.5 percent reduction in fees. That creates an incentive to take on more private-pay patients, because otherwise, the math doesn't add up. One might say the expert commissions are plugging holes—yes, but one of those holes is medicine's willingness to listen.