Cologne - An astronomical sum: 14 million euros paid by the insurance GBK Cologne in 2005 and 2006 for the treatment of two hemophilia patients - but cost a syringe, according to the fund up to 27,000 euros!
Statutory funds must also include these patients. But the GBK (30,000 members) was almost bankrupt, now raises additional contributions from their members.
In fact, the most expensive hemophiliacs continuous loads in the healthcare system, "said SPD-health expert Karl Lauterbach. "Especially the small funds can hardly afford the cost of treatment."
The GBK obviously had a special "bad luck": The two cases of hemophilia, a boy (6) and a 26-year-old, were extremely expensive. "In 2005 we paid only for the man 10 million euros for the drugs," said Helmut Wasserfuhr GBK Board.
Hell of a lot of money - is a blood heir action really so expensive? "Come on it, it's the severity of the disease and whether there will be complications," said Dr. Johannes Oldenburg, director of the hemophilia clinic at the University of Bonn.
Hemophilia clotting factors have injected - that normally would cost 100,000 to 200,000 euros per year. "There are patients who are sufferers. There are only two medications that can help them - and they are extremely expensive, "says Oldenburg. Up to 14,000 euros per day, often for several weeks.
Enormous cost - but just 10 million? Werner Kalnins, the chairman of the German Hemophilia Society, which can sit up: "I have isolated cases of 3, maybe 4 million euros in well known, but no more. And syringes, which cost € 27,000 per unit, I have never heard. "
The GBK have had to make debts. To pay off, they pay the members from 20 September eight euros more. The 26-year-old patient in the meantime in at TK.
"Additional contributions will not be with us," said spokeswoman Andrea Kleinbreuer to EXPRESS. "With more than 5 million paying members, the solidarity absorb these costs may be different."
