Germany’s Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) last week proposed significant changes to the medical cannabis prescription process, set to have a major impact on the country’s already booming market.
Germany’s private or ‘self funded’ medical cannabis market has exploded since the introduction of CanG on April 01, which removed cannabis from the list of narcotics alongside a swathe of major bureaucratic hurdles, with some suggesting the market has already expanded between 80%-100% since last year.
Despite this, the number patients receiving reimbursement for their prescriptions under Statutory Health Insurance (GKV), which covers around 90% of the population, has remained relatively flat.
However, should the proposals of the G-BA be approved by the Ministry of Health, this could be about to change, seeing an estimated more than 70% of German practicing physicians given the power to prescribe reimbursed medical cannabis without the prior approval of the statutory health insurance companies.
Sven-Roger von Schilling, the Chief Financial Officer of Grünhorn, the umbrella brand for the largest cannabis network in Germany, told Business of Cannabis: “It’s going to have a major effect on basically the entire German market, because suddenly the statutory health insurers are required to pick up the cost of medical cannabis.”
What happened?
On July 18, the G-BA approved proposals that would fundamentally change the process by which doctors can prescribe medical cannabis.
