Will the cost hammer come after Corona? Health insurance companies warn of an explosion in premiums

The health insurance companies will hit a deficit of 16.6 billion euros in the coming year.

The corona crisis is only partly the reason for this.

Expensive laws also increase spending.

• The

  health insurance companies in Germany

  are said to be missing

  16.6 billion euros

  in the coming year

  .

• In addition to

  Corona *

  , the

  cause of the deficit is

  mainly in

  Jens Spahn's

  expensive laws

  .

• The resulting

  additional expenses

  are enormous.

  Do the

  reserves

  now have to be

  sacrificed?

Munich

- It wasn't long ago that the pots of the health insurance companies overflowed.

They “continue to hoard the money from the contributors”, rumbled

Minister

at the end of 2018. Two years later, the world is different.

A pandemic is keeping the country under control and the statutory health insurance (GKV) is complaining about a financial shortage that is expected to amount to 16.6 billion euros next year alone.

There are still reserves - at the end of 2019 it was around 20 billion euros.

According to the industry, a crash threatens by 2022 at the latest.

Corona and Jens Spahn's laws result in enormous additional expenses for health insurers

How did it happen so quickly?

Of course, the answer also has something

to do

with the

.

Far less than one might think, however.

Because the estimated

in the coming year for the coffers is

.

Lot of money.

But the expensive laws of Health Minister Spahn are far more important.

The Nursing Staff Strengthening Act alone will burden the coffers with 2.45 billion euros in the coming year, while the Appointments Service and Supply Act will account for 2.3 billion euros.

In total, the

incurred under Spahn add up

euros in 2021.

With the law to improve health care and #care we face the social question of the 20s.

Among other things, we are creating 20,000 new jobs for nursing assistants in the elderly and enable the financial stabilization of statutory health insurances.

pic.twitter.com/tJwJNPLNgD

- Jens Spahn (@jensspahn) November 26, 2020

Federal government provides several billion euros in funding - AOK Bayern warns

To make up for the total deficit of at least 16.6 billion euros in the coming year, the federal government will pay an additional five billion euros.

This tax subsidy is intended to ensure that the additional contributions do not go through the roof and place an additional burden on the insured in an already difficult economic situation.

Because the federal government wants to keep its promise that social security contributions will not rise above 40 percent.

At least until the

.

The SPD-led countries had even considered a new solidarity surcharge.

However, the proposal no longer appears in the corona resolution of all countries with the federal government.

Since five billion euros are not enough, the average additional contribution, on which the funds are based, has already been increased by 0.2 percentage points for 2021.

The coffers should also contribute eight billion euros from their reserves.

The fact that eleven billion euros flow from the funds of the contributors is causing trouble.

"The statutory health insurance funds are supposed to give up reserves that they had provided for the rapidly growing increases in expenditure and innovative projects in health care," says Irmgard Stippler, CEO of AOK Bayern.

"That is why we demand to be able to keep the reserves and instead provide a higher federal subsidy." Otherwise, the AOK Federal Association warns against further hefty increases in contributions.

Corona and expensive laws: BKK board member demands changes from politics

The Bavarian company health insurance funds (BKK) also argue

that the health insurers are being forced to reduce their

.

This is because the reserves could only be used up once, while an advancing spending policy repeatedly creates high deficits.

“By 2022 at the latest, another wave of increases in the additional contributions will roll out to all those with statutory health insurance,” says BKK board member Sigrid König.

Instead, politicians must

more

and change structures.

A topic that has been causing explosions since the beginning of the pandemic.

In the worst case, excessively low reserves could threaten the existence of individual health insurers.

For example, treating a newborn with the drug Zolgensma costs around two million euros.

"Even individual cases can push small coffers from which the reserves have been taken into the red," says König.