Health insurance Only health card valid

From 1 January 2015, only the new health card will apply

26/12/2014

At the end of the year, legally insured patients are not allowed to use old health insurance cards without a chip. „Then the one-year transitional period comes to an end“, as the GKV reports. The health insurance companies, however, expected no major problems in the final conversion of the system. The vast majority of patients own the new electronic health card (eGK).

99 percent equipped with health card
The coffers do not expect any major complications in the final conversion of the old cash card to the new health card with picture and chip. „In Berlin and Brandenburg, 99 percent of all 1.3 million AOK insured persons have received the electronic health card“, For example, reports the AOK Northeast. Other health insurance companies such as the DAK or Techniker Krankenkasse report that 99 percent of their insured persons are equipped with the health card.

But there would be insured who forgot to send a passport photo. Others go to the doctor so rarely that they have not noticed the change despite intensive media coverage. Some also refused to give up their old card as they had concerns about privacy. Because in perspective, even highly sensitive data such as medical records and findings should be stored by means of the electronic health card. On the part of the Kassenverbundes it was said that the „Privacy concerns are largely eliminated“.

Without a card anyway a treatment
But what happens if insured persons can not show a health card. „Anyone who does not have a valid health card from the 1st of January has ten days after the start of the treatment by the contract doctor to present it or to have the cash register issue an individual case confirmation as proof of the insurance relationship“, says Marcus Dräger of the TK. Who also lets this period elapse, must pay the medical bill on the basis of a private treatment itself. (Sb)

Picture: AOK