Health insurance surplus lower

Less surplus in the first half of the year. Profit of the cash registers goes back

09/05/2013

The surpluses of the statutory health insurance funds were lower than expected last year. In addition, the health fund posted a deficit of nearly two billion in the first half of the year. Although it came to this development, the financial reserves of the health insurance funds amounted to about 27.7 billion euros, as the Federal Ministry of Health in Berlin announced. For the Minister of Health Daniel Bahr of the FDP nevertheless a "solid foundation".

In the first half of 2012, the deficit of the health fund was just under half a billion euros. The health insurance funds receive their allocations from the fund.

As a reason for the higher minus, the cuts in the tax subsidy by 2.5 billion euros to now 11.5 billion have been identified. The abolition of the practice fee caused further lack of income. "Bottom line, health funds and health insurance funds will again have a clear plus at the end of the year," said Florian Lanz, spokesman for the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance. Because the funds expect a positive financial development in the further course of the year. With one-time payments such as Christmas and holiday pay for employees and higher pensions, the fund will have more income than expenditure in the second half of the year.

In the first half of 2013, the surplus more than halved compared to the same period of the previous year, as many health insurance funds have paid premium payments to their members. By contrast, expenditure per insured increased by 4.6 percent in the first half of the year. The cost of drugs, however, increased only by 0.3 percent. Expenditure on doctors and dentists was up ten percent. One reason for this is "fee adjustments" and the abolition of the practice fee, which was previously charged to physicians' total compensation.

There is still some catching up to do in terms of health promotion expenditure, especially in prevention and occupational health care. Expenditure in the first half of the year for this area amounted to 125 million euros, which represented 0.1 percent of the total expenditure of the statutory health insurance. According to the Minister of Health, the health insurances are well behind the expenditure needed to strengthen health promotion. (Fr)

Image: Thomas Siepmann