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The Federal AOK Association warns of a possible doubling of the additional contribution to legal health insurance if the federal government does not significantly increase the crown’s aid for health insurers. “Without countermeasures,” the association’s director, Martin Litsch, told the “Augsburger Allgemeine” newspaper that the average additional contribution could rise from the current 1.3 percent to 2.5 percent after next year’s federal elections.
The largest federal grant of five billion euros promised by Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) is not enough to cover the financial gap of more than 16 billion euros in the mandatory health insurance forecast for 2021, Litsch said. The grand coalition wants to fill the billion-plus hole to more than two-thirds with taxpayer money, “by health insurance companies being fleeced and the average rate of additional contribution is increased.”
Health insurance funds are financed with two components: On the one hand, there is the legal contribution rate charged by all insurance companies. It is currently 14.6 percent. To cover additional financing requirements, health insurance companies charge the additional contributions listed by the AOK. Since the beginning of 2019, the employer and the employee have paid half of the additional contribution. The amount of the additional contribution is determined by individual health insurance companies.
Litsch criticized the fact that expenses to deal with the corona pandemic were unilaterally imposed on statutory taxpayers. Funding for supplementary intensive care beds, the voucher for nurses and coronavirus tests remain “solely on behalf of contributors to mandatory health insurance.
The chairman of the AOK Federal Association board also complained that private health insurance was not contributing enough to the health costs of the pandemic. In reality, however, the state has to pay for it: “They are tasks for society as a whole, the costs of which would have to be paid out of taxpayer money rather than passed on to health insurance taxpayers,” said the president of the Asociation.
