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PKV insurance card: what to do if you can no longer afford the premiums?
Photo: Arno Burgi / picture alliance / dpa
Anyone who needs a doctor's appointment knows the question: "Statutory or private?" It is not only when making appointments that privately insured people often have an advantage: the insurers lure with attractive tariffs and additional services.
But in the corona pandemic, many privately insured people feel little of it:
Many hospitals do not offer optional services, such as accommodation in single rooms, or only to a limited extent due to the corona pandemic.
If privately insured people look after their children because they cannot work, they, unlike those with statutory insurance, are not entitled to child sickness benefit.
Since the contributions for private health insurance are not dependent on income, there is a risk of payment difficulties if income is lower or even disappears completely during the pandemic.
The private health insurance actually promises more performance for the money.
This makes private health insurance particularly attractive for civil servants, the self-employed and high-income earners.
In contrast to statutory health insurance, the insurance costs do not depend on your own income.
Anyone who earns more than 64,350 euros per year as an employee can take out private insurance - and thus often drives cheaper than with the statutory ones, especially at a young age.
Around 8.7 million people in Germany are currently private in Germany.
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