Health insurance More protection against over-indebtedness

Health insurance More protection against over-indebtedness / Health News

Federal Cabinet agrees for relief of defaulting contributors

04/10/2013

Many people in Germany can no longer pay their health insurance contribution. Affected are in the first place „voluntarily legally insured“, which, for example, record highly variable income as individual self-employed and nevertheless are often affected by high cash contributions. So that the debts do not rise in the immeasurable, the Federal Cabinet approved today on Wednesday from Union and FDP a bill of the Federal Minister of Health. This provides for reducing the annual deferred payment for debtors from the current 60 percent per year to a maximum of twelve percent. In addition, insured persons of the private health insurance (PKV) can move into a so-called emergency tariff, which is continued with greatly reduced health services. Electoral tariffs should be severely restricted in favor of private health insurance at the health insurance funds.

According to the Federal Minister of Health Daniel Bahr (FDP), this reform, which was confirmed in the Federal Cabinet, is intended to give the option of returning defaulting insured persons the opportunity to return to their current insurance coverage. „If someone is in trouble, there must also be a way to get out again“, the minister said today at a press conference in Berlin. According to Bahr, these are the people affected „mostly self-employed“, who can no longer pay their contributions.

240,000 people are in debt with their health insurance
„About 100,000 people in Germany are defaulting contributors who have accumulated a debt of about two billion euros“, said Bahr. If you are unable to afford insurance coverage because of your debts, you can only take out an emergency care, if you have severe pain or if you are pregnant, you are entitled to health insurance. There is also a high number of debtors in private health insurance. Here, Bahr estimated the number of those affected at about 140,000 defaulting private insured.

The bill provides that the voluntary statutory health insurance instead of the current debt surcharge of five percent per month now only pay the regular monthly late payment premium of one percent of the outstanding amount.

Emergency tariff for indebted private patients
On the other hand, those who have debts in the private health insurance, according to the legally prescribed dunning procedure in a so-called „emergency tariff“ moved. The previously agreed private insurance contract is suspended until the debt is paid. The emergency tariff has a much lower premium, but insured persons only receive health care if they suffer from acute to life-threatening illnesses.

The umbrella organization of statutory health insurance GKV was satisfied with the decision. As the spokesman of the association Florian Lanz said, would „now the conditions have been corrected“ and abolished the extreme interest of 60 percent. The SPD health expert and member of parliament Hilde Matteis criticized the project of the Federal Government. This reform does not change the underlying situation of the debtors. Rather, it must be looked at, why those affected accumulate this debt at all. The Left Party also sharply criticized the new regulations. "The bill is an invitation to accumulate debts and then get into a favorable emergency tariff“, said the left Martina Bunge. She referred to the regulation in private health insurance. In their view, be „the follow-up costs are incalculable“.

Statutory health insurance funds are severely curtailed
The left also criticized that the statutory sicknesses are severely curtailed in favor of private health insurance. Thus, the health insurance funds may no longer offer so-called electoral tariffs. These included supplementary dentures or tariffs, which provided for a reimbursement of contributions if an insured person did not use certain health services. Also, according to the bill „in the calculation of these offers no holding effects are taken into account“. The effect is to encourage insured persons through a special optional tariff to stay in the statutory health insurance and not to migrate to private health insurance. „With the abolishment of the holding effects, the Federal Government wants to make election tariffs much more expensive“, The health insurance had last feared. So it should be made impossible for the cash registers to continue offering optional fares. (Sb)

Also read:
Zoll drives debts for health insurances
Bad image for private health insurance
Insureds owe billions to the health insurance companies

Picture: Gerd Altmann