This is the best summary I could come up with:

General practitioners and specialists are protesting the government’s health policies, which they say are increasing costs, lowering earnings and burdening them with more and more bureaucracy.

“I don’t understand why there is a strike,” said Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, speaking with public broadcaster ZDF on Wednesday evening.

The associations participating in the strike have argued that the shutdown is meant to protect patients’ well-being in the long term, describing the current action as a “lesser evil.”

They argue that more and more practices are being forced to shut down, and more and more doctors are retiring early rather than working for low pay, a result mainly of the “budgetization” imposed on them by health insurers.

The doctors’ associations, who are calling for the 1992 measure to be scrapped, have said this means that if they put in more time for individual patients and continue treating people beyond a certain budget — especially in crises such as pandemics — they effectively have to work for free.

Lauterbach has promised a summit with the doctors in the new year to address their concerns, though he warned that simply pouring more money into the system wasn’t on the table.

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