PKV Association knows no crisis

Health insurances: PKV-Verband knows no crisis: The association of private health insurers has reported that the aging provisions, membership numbers and private supplementary insurances have risen sharply again in 2009.

According to the private health insurance association, almost 9 million people were privately insured at the end of 2009. That's about 10 percent of the German population. The number of members increased by two percent. The private supplementary insurance increased by 3.5 percent. Age provisions even rose by 7.5 percent in 2009. Associated with this, revenue from private health insurance membership fees rose by 3.7 percent to 29.4 billion.
The chairman of the association, Reinhold Schulte, would like in the future „have a much greater impact on the quality and related quantities and prices of health services“, because the costs „disproportionately“ have risen.

On „Wikileaks“ Meanwhile, the 140-page final report "Importance of competition in the field of private health insurance in the light of the expected demographic development" of the Berlin Institute for Health and Social Research (IGES) and the former business Bert Rürup was published at the end of February, on behalf of the Federal Ministry for economy (BMWI) was made. There it is stated that, sooner or later, lack of competition and rising expenditure (more so than in the statutory health insurance funds) will lead to a problem for private health insurers.

The takeover of services, carried out by naturopaths and naturopaths, should be one of the reasons for the rising numbers of private health insurers. Costs of methods such as osteopathy, which are currently experiencing a lively inflow, are not covered by the statutory health insurance. As more and more people in Germany choose naturopathic procedures due to the individual diagnostic and treatment procedures, the short waiting time and the solution-oriented functional treatment approach, the positive trend for private health insurers is likely to persist, as long as the statutory health insurance funds remain in their negative attitude. (Thorsten Fischer, Naturopath Osteopathy, 18.03.2010)