Lack of finances in statutory health insurance funds

A short­fall of around sev­en bil­lion euros — this is the con­clu­sion reached by the so-called esti­ma­tors’ cir­cle with regard to the finan­cial sit­u­a­tion of the statu­to­ry health insur­ance funds — although the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has already promised a lav­ish sub­sidy of around 21.5 bil­lion euros from tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey. Who will now foot the bill for the pan­dem­ic? Will there be hefty pre­mi­um increas­es for insureds and employers?

If there is no promise of cost cov­er­age from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment by the end of Octo­ber, the statu­to­ry health insur­ance funds will be plan­ning for sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er con­tri­bu­tions in 2022. This debate is in dan­ger of being lost in the coali­tion negotiations.

Mean­while, Health Min­is­ter Jens Spahn is still paint­ing a con­cil­ia­to­ry pic­ture — with­out high­er con­tri­bu­tions for those with statu­to­ry health insur­ance. The social guar­an­tee with guar­an­teed social secu­ri­ty con­tri­bu­tions of less than 40 per­cent (employ­er plus employ­ee con­tri­bu­tions) is to be retained. At 39.5 per­cent, there is no room for improve­ment. How­ev­er, this also makes it clear that an increase in health insur­ance con­tri­bu­tions can only be avoid­ed if the miss­ing sev­en bil­lion euros are borne entire­ly by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. In this case, there­fore, all tax­pay­ers would have to step in.

Pos­si­ble increase in con­tri­bu­tion rates from January

This find­ing does not come as a sur­prise. The expect­ed gap was already known before the fed­er­al elec­tion. But increas­ing con­tri­bu­tions is not the way to win votes. Thus, the gov­ern­ment still in office could not bring itself to increase the sub­sidy for the statu­to­ry health insur­ance fund accord­ing­ly. If there is no new gov­ern­ment in the next two weeks — and if it does not put the issue direct­ly on its agen­da — the statu­to­ry health insur­ance funds will have to plan for the afore­men­tioned gap of sev­en bil­lion euros in the 2022 bud­get for secu­ri­ty rea­sons alone.

As a result, con­tri­bu­tion rates would have to rise for the vast major­i­ty of health insur­ers — and that would already be the case at the turn of the year. This is because health insur­ers must sub­mit their finan­cial plans for the com­ing year to their super­vi­so­ry author­i­ty by the end of Octo­ber, and the author­i­ty must approve them. Under­fund­ed bud­gets, how­ev­er, can­not be approved. So the approx­i­mate­ly 70 mil­lion mem­bers of the statu­to­ry health insur­ance funds and their employ­ers will have to finance the sev­en-bil­lion gap through high­er contributions.