Complaints to the private health insurance

Report: More complaints in the private health insurance

Reasons are, so to read, increased drug prices and according to the newspaper „The daily level“, hold each other „more and more doctors and laboratories“(...) „at the private patients for missed cash receipts harmless“. It also states that private health insurance companies have very little opportunity to negotiate prices, volumes and quality. For example, private insurers are now demanding that there must be more possibilities of influencing them.

According to media reports, the Federal Government has received an opinion from the Berlin Institute for Health and Social Research (IGES) and ex-economist and economist Bert Rürup, according to which private insurance expenditures increased by 49 per cent between 1997 and 2008. For the members of the statutory health insurance, it was only 31 percent. And according to the German consumer protection organization Stiftung Warentest, premiums for PKV members are supposed to have risen by six per cent a year, compared to just 3 per cent among PKV members.

Some private insurers are, according to the information, to encourage new customers very cheap rates, which would then lead to quite high premium growth later. However, according to the Ombudsman of the PKV, Helmut Müller, it is legally stipulated that the contributions must be increased if the real costs compared to the calculated costs would amount to more than 10 percent.

Because according to a report of „South German newspaper“ from Monday, the displeasure of the members over increased contributions and withheld services would now express in heaped complaints and become visible. The complaints had already risen by ten percent in 2009 and had increased by half since 2004. Overall, in 2009 it was just over 5,000 complaints, a large part of which was due to the above increases.

According to the „Tagesspiegel“ would have the old and chronically ill private insured pay the price for the developments. You could not go back to the GKV and no longer cheap to another PKV.
According to other media reports, a spokeswoman for the IGES has announced that a working group planned for the expert opinion has been stopped by experts from the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Media accuse the Ministry of Rainer Brüderle (FDP) to withhold the report from the public. The Federal Government, especially the FDP, is extremely supportive of the principle of funded pension provision, as it is operated by private health insurers. Since the study is more than inconvenient.

These are complex relationships that need to be included in the critique, because as always a scapegoat search is not a solution-oriented approach. If the statements in the media reports are correct and laboratories and physicians really get back from the losses caused by the health care reform by private insured persons, then a political rethink and action must take place that goes beyond surface cosmetic measures.

From the perspective of naturopathy, the private health insurance in the payment of naturopathic therapies in Germany are an important factor. With the assumption of costs, they are partly responsible for rethinking and broadening the perspective beyond established medical procedures. (Thorsten Fischer, Naturopath Osteopathy, 17.02.2010)