Henke was directly elected to the Bundestag in the Aachen I constituency in 2009, receiving more votes than incumbent federal health minister Ulla Schmidt in the process. He has been a member of the Health Committee since his election, becoming deputy chairman of the committee in 2014. Henke was re-elected in 2013. In the negotiations to form a coalition government under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel following the 2017 federal elections, he was part of the working group on health policy, led by Hermann Gröhe, Georg Nüßlein and Malu Dreyer.