The book that Jens Spahn has written about the Corona crisis is 304 pages long. It is entitled, “We will have to forgive each other a lot.” The pandemic swept across the country like a hurricane. The former health minister reports “very personally from the center of the hurricane,” says the advertisement for the book.
The conclusion is much shorter and quite sober, which the Federal Audit Office (BRH) presented to the Bundestag in a closed session in the spring. 31 pages, large font, clear statements. Title: “Overview and conclusions from corona tests”. Core content: expensive mistakes by the Federal Ministry of Health – especially under Spahn, who was in office until the end of 2021.
If what the Court of Auditors has listed were a school report, it would be pretty bad for the CDU politician. The control over the ministry’s many expenses during the Corona crisis was partly inadequate or even insufficient. The Court of Auditors has examined measures against the virus amounting to 62.5 billion euros, and further investigations are still ongoing.
For example, the Court of Auditors is examining whether the ministry’s needs analysis for vaccine procurement was appropriate. But the audit results so far are sobering. According to the Federal Court of Auditors, the ministry has spent far more money than was necessary to protect the population as well as possible from the often deadly virus.
The BRH also uses its assessment as an opportunity to give basic tips on how the federal government should best deal with the increasing number of crises. “Head over heels?” Better not. “Clear rules are necessary – and possible even in crises,” the authority writes. Unbureaucratic help for the people does not mean that there are no rules; that the state does not have to take a close look.
The Court of Auditors’ conclusion on the Corona crisis is therefore both a guideline for Spahn’s successor Karl Lauterbach (SPD), whose term in office has also been the subject of one or two critical comments, and a lesson for the entire government. The Court of Auditors is criticizing the overly lax use of taxpayers’ money, and not only in the case of Corona.
Corona aid as disguised subsidies for sick hospitals
The Court of Auditors submitted its 31-page report to the Audit Committee of the Bundestag on 24 April. The document is available to the South German NewspaperNDR and WDR. The financial control authority has already published numerous critical reports on individual cases in the past. Now there is a previously unpublished overall assessment of the investigations to date, including an outlook.
According to the document, the Ministry of Health spent more than 100 billion euros between 2020 and 2023 to combat the virus. Audit results are available for almost two thirds of the expenditure, the 62.5 billion euros already mentioned. Some of the harshest criticism is directed at the corona tests, which cost almost 18 billion euros, especially at private testing stations. The Court of Auditors criticizes excessive flat-rate remuneration and inadequate control options. This leads to a “risk of abuse”.
How true. The police and public prosecutors have a lot to do to investigate all the suspicions of fraud. Damage totaling more than one billion euros could have been caused here. The first prison sentences have already been handed down. In addition, the state has spent 4.4 billion euros on corona tests in nursing homes by 2023. “Payments were made without requesting receipts,” complains the Court of Auditors, and sees a “risk of abuse” here too.
The next big chunk is the 18.6 billion euros that the Ministry of Health paid hospitals, according to the document. As compensation for hospitals postponing treatments to make room for the care of Covid-19 cases. The ministry gave more here than hospitals actually lost in revenue. “Overcompensation” is the key word. This consolidated “inefficient hospital structures”. Ultimately, according to the Court of Auditors, this was partly a rescue program for financially ailing hospitals in order to keep them artificially alive.
What is also striking is the so-called nursing rescue package from 2020 to 2022, amounting to 7.3 billion euros for nursing homes. The Court of Auditors criticizes the lack of evidence of what was done with all this money. Only one in ten funding applications required such evidence to be submitted. Less control is hardly possible. A similar picture emerges with the purchase and distribution of corona protective masks and other equipment to ward off the virus, including gowns and gloves, but also ventilators.
Advice from the Court of Auditors: Ensure controls from the outset
The BRH is particularly harsh on this point. It criticizes “massive over-procurement far in excess of demand”, high stock levels with no benefit for the fight against the pandemic, “subsequent classification as classified information without sufficient justification”, inadequate documentation of the processes and much more. And it addresses the distribution of protective masks to particularly vulnerable population groups (elderly people, chronically ill people) by pharmacies. “Remuneration to pharmacies is almost four times as high as the purchase price of the masks,” writes the Court of Auditors. At the time, the masks were “offered in retail at a fraction of the reimbursement amounts set for pharmacies,” the BRH now added in response to a request.
The Court of Auditors is taking the overall picture of everything that went wrong as an opportunity to do a political primer. For future crises, “appropriate precautions” are important. For example: “Comprehensively document administrative actions and make them transparent.” Or: Ensure controls from the outset on what happens with the money and thus “minimize opportunities for abuse.” This also reads like a strong warning to Spahn’s successor Lauterbach, under whose leadership the Ministry of Health is sometimes very secretive. Especially when it comes to dealing with Spahn’s mask purchases.
There are now plenty of crises, and also government aid programs for citizens and companies. The Court of Auditors is continuing to investigate, for example, the energy price cap. And there is already a conclusion about the short-time work allowance paid by the Federal Employment Agency: “When used on a large scale, there are significant weaknesses and high administrative costs,” writes the Federal Employment Agency. Indications of abuse are not systematically recorded and dealt with quickly.
This is reminiscent of the handling of the Corona crisis, from which former minister Spahn also draws conclusions. “We can learn from the Federal Audit Office’s reports on mask procurement for future pandemics,” the former minister said in response to a request. Spahn has repeatedly stated that at the time it was about protecting human lives. In view of a “dramatic shortage” of masks, clinics, nurses and doctors were in great distress and concern. The government was able to resolve this emergency.
On his homepage, Spahn describes the content of his book as follows: “How does politics work in a new type of crisis? What mistakes were made, including by me? I’m trying to give answers to these questions in retrospect.” At the same time, he wants to look ahead. The lessons from the Corona crisis are diverse and essential for dealing with current and future crises. “Only if we draw the right conclusions and decisions from our experiences do we have a chance of doing better in future crises.” At least on this point, the Court of Auditors and Spahn are likely to agree.
