According to a study, the contributions could decrease if all citizens were insured by law. In Europe, only Germany has a dual system, including private health insurance.
Gütersloh (dpa) - If all citizens were legally insured, the contributions according to a study could decrease noticeably. If one includes the financially more powerful private insured in the statutory health insurance (GKV), each member currently insured in the GKV and his employer could save an average of 145 euros per year.
This is the result of a representative study published on Monday by the Berlin Iges Institute on behalf of the Bertelsmann Foundation.
According to the study, privately insured persons - i.e. high earners, civil servants, high-income self-employed persons - earn at least 56 percent more on average than those insured by law. They also tend to be healthier. If they were in the statutory health insurance system, they could expect a net financial surplus of 8.7 to 10.6 billion euros annually, the study calculated. The contribution rate could be reduced by 0.6 to 0.7 percentage points.
In Europe, only Germany has a dual system. "A viable solidarity community can only be created if all insured people come together regardless of income to compensate for the risks between the healthy and the sick," said board member Brigitte Mohn in Gütersloh. The split weakens social cohesion. The civil servants' association dbb disagreed. The demand for an abolition of the dual system is "nonsense," said dbb boss Ulrich Silberbach. "Our healthcare is one of the best in the world."
The Iges study is based on the latest data (2016) from an annual repeat survey of around 12,000 households. In 2016 - as is currently the case - around 8.8 million people were privately insured. The GKV had around 70.4 million insured in 2016, and currently there are a good 73.2 million due to immigration, said foundation health expert Stefan Etgeton.
The remuneration for resident doctors would be approximately 2.5 times higher for services for private patients. If the doctors are compensated for the loss of fees that would result in a loss of private health insurance, the simulation calculates a contribution rate that is still 0.2 to 0.3 percentage points lower.
Etgeton criticized: "The average SHI insured person pays more than necessary each year so that high-income earners, civil servants and the self-employed can avoid solidarity compensation." On the contrary, the dbb boss emphasized that the dual health system is "living solidarity", everyone benefited from the turnover of the people insured with private health insurance. The GKV closed last year for the first time since 2015 with a loss of around one billion euros. The employer and employee share the contributions equally.
