Anyone with statutory health insurance should expect higher premiums at the start of 2023. Many health insurance plans are raising their supplementary premiums. This means health insurance will become more expensive.
Each insurance provider sets its own exact contribution rate. On average, the supplementary contribution will amount to 1.6 percent of income. Last year, it was 1.3 percent.
Important: This time, statutory health insuranceproviders are not required to notify members of the new premium rate by mail. This obligation to provide information has been suspended by law until June 2023. However, the providers must notify members of the premium increase via their websites or in their member magazines.
Background on the premium increase: Statutory health insurance plans need money. They have accumulated an enormous deficit. One reason for this is expensive new laws that do not improve healthcare but instead benefit doctors and providers of health apps.
Employers Share the Burden
In light of higher premiums, fair financing of health insurance funds is particularly important. Since 2019, employers have been paying half of the supplementary premium. Previously, insured individuals had to shoulder the supplementary premium alone. It was introduced in 2015 and has risen steadily ever since: from 0.9 percent in 2015 to 1.6 percent today.
IG Metall had sharply criticized the one-sided burden on insured individuals and successfully advocated for employers and employees to share the entire health insurance premium—including the supplementary premium.
The return to this equal financing arrangement has saved employees a lot of money: An employee with an annual salary of 42,000 euros (gross) has saved nearly 1,000 euros since 2019*.
A Fresh Start for the Healthcare System
In the long term, only a radical reform can help health insurance plans: a universal health insurance system into which all working people contribute equally. It would bring more money into the system and improve healthcare.
Far too often, the focus is solely on costs. Statutory health insurance plans are expected to engage in a price war. Yet for the insured, care is what matters most. And there have long been major gaps in that area.
Eyeglasses, quality dental prosthetics, certain medications: Insured individuals must pay for all of these out of pocket because they have been removed from the health insurers’ list of covered services. This is a fact that employer representatives like to gloss over when they complain about social security contributions.
*Here’s how we calculated it: 42,000 euros multiplied by the average additional premium, divided by two, and then added up for the years 2019 through 2022. In other words: We added up the employer’s share of the average supplementary contribution for the years 2019 through 2022. For a gross annual salary of 42,000 euros, this amounts to 966 euros.
