Health insurance additional contributions also in 2011

Numerous public health insurance companies will again demand an additional contribution from the insured in 2011. More health insurance funds will follow, because the federal government is planning the disassembly of the joint health system.

(20.08.2010) Numerous health insurance companies will again demand an additional contribution from their members in 2011. Because despite the planned health care reform, the financial worries of the funds will not be eliminated. By the additional contribution the health insurance companies try to compensate their high expenditures. Cash registers that already demand an additional contribution, have announced to stay in 2011. Other funds, however, summon that they do not want to collect any additional contributions from the insured until at least the middle of next year. But smaller funds in particular have no choice but either to get together with other funds and / or introduce additional contributions.

It is already foreseeable that the planned increased general contribution rate of 15.5 percent will not solve the financial worries of the public health insurance funds. People are getting older and older and the pharmaceutical industry is launching more and more medicines on the market in order to serve rising morbidity rates. More and more people are suffering from the general growing work stress. As a result, the proportion of mental illness continues to rise. Demographic change is also increasing the proportion of chronic diseases. In addition, people in the Western world are feeding so poorly that there is a significant increase in disease here as well. The result: Diseases such as diabetes are developing into common diseases, the costs of health insurance are rising massively.

All in all, no rosy prospects for the health insurance companies. Nevertheless, the Federal Government plans to entice contributors who are above average in their earning and are still young into private health insurance. Here, the change should be much easier. Statutory health insurance funds should not be allowed to offer any optional tariffs, according to health care reform plans. „earners“ then have (almost) no reason to stay in the legal. The consequence: The health insurance companies are missing exactly that „earners“, which create the social balance within the box office.

However, many people do not want to put up with the burden of the additional contribution and refuse to pay. According to agency reports, about one million people are currently refusing the additional contribution. But here, too, the federal government wants to force people to make up for the defaulting payments. Who does not pay should pay namely a so-called late payment surcharge of up to 225 euros.

At the beginning of the year, the federal government announced that the increase in contributions would very likely also mean that the additional contribution was formally abolished. But here is a contrary trend to observe. For politically, the additional contribution as an income-independent component in cash financing is entirely intentional. Therefore, it was also announced in the middle of the year, as part of the health care reform, the decision to let the coffers, how high the additional contributions in 2011 can be increased. In this point, many health insurance companies will not be otherwise possible to increase the additional contributions again significantly. The health insurance then has the cash patients, who can only defend themselves by changing the health insurance.

After all these aspects, it is therefore likely that other health insurance companies will make an additional contribution. Here it can be said that the black-yellow coalition shows a clear interest in weakening the original health care system. Competition between health insurances should increase, insured persons should be significantly more involved in health care costs and private health insurances should be financially strengthened. That means the end for the parity system of the health service in Germany. And no one really gets it. (Sb)