“significant uncertainties”: health insurance companies warn of new risks for stable contributions

The statutory health insurance companies are warning of new financial risks due to planned changes to the savings package that is already in effect for stable contributions next year. “The financial impact of the planned measures can currently hardly be estimated,” says a statement from the National Association of Health Insurance Funds for a hearing in the Bundestag on Wednesday, which was available to the German Press Agency. The volume of counter-financing required to avoid additional burdens on statutory health insurance is likely to be “at best just barely achieved”.

The coalition factions of the Union and SPD are planning some additions to the billion-dollar savings package, which is intended to relieve the coffers of sharply rising expenses in 2027 in order to prevent increases in contributions. Among other things, commitments to the states to approve the austerity law in the Federal Council in the summer are to be implemented. The then Health Minister Nina Warken (CDU) had promised the states an additional 550 million euros for the clinics. The coalition is now also planning regulations to secure psychotherapeutic care, which no longer made it into the package.

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Is the counter-financing enough?

The new minister Carsten Linnemann (CDU) had already made it clear that everything had to be seriously financed in order to maintain the goal of stable contributions. There will be a hearing in the Bundestag's Health Committee on Wednesday with a number of associations on the currently planned regulations.

The National Association of Health Insurance Funds complained that the planned measures created “significant new uncertainties” among affected actors and insured persons. It is incomprehensible to withdraw savings contributions from individual areas such as clinical care and parts of general medical and psychotherapeutic care and to shift the resulting burdens unilaterally to other service providers and once again to the health insurance funds.