Ahead of the release of recommendations for statutory health insurance reform, employer association president Rainer Dulger has called for a spending freeze. This measure is necessary to stop the further increase in contributions for employees and employers, the president of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA) told Welt am Sonntag. The social welfare association VdK, for its part, warned against benefit cuts at the expense of insured individuals.
In light of growing billion-euro deficits, Federal Health Minister Nina Warken (CDU) has established a commission to make proposals for stabilizing contribution rates in statutory health insurance (GKV). The commission will present its report to the federal government on Monday afternoon.
"We already have the most expensive healthcare system in Europe today - but without the corresponding quality," said employer president Dulger. In addition to a spending freeze, overcapacity in hospitals must be reduced and genuine efficiency incentives must be created in the system. He described the administrative costs of social insurance institutions, totaling more than 26 billion euros annually, as too high.
Dulger emphasized as particularly urgent that the federal government increase payments for health insurance contributions for Citizen's Income (Bürgergeld) recipients. Currently, the federal government pays only 140 euros per person per month to health insurance funds - resulting in an annual deficit of around ten billion euros that contribution payers must cover. "Such benefits that are not related to insurance must be financed from the tax budget, not through social contributions," Dulger demanded.
Parliamentary group leader Jens Spahn (CDU) told the newspaper he found the idea fundamentally correct "to finance these costs completely from tax funds and not from contribution revenues." However, the additional costs of twelve billion euros "would then have to be shouldered by the federal budget," which already has "a large deficit." "Simply shifting the costs will therefore not solve the problem," Spahn said.
BDA president Dulger also advocated for the abolition of contribution-free co-insurance for spouses as part of an overall package. Such a step would bring around three billion euros in relief, Dulger said. Handelsblatt reported last week that there are considerations within the coalition to abolish spousal co-insurance. Those who were previously insured free of charge would in future pay a minimum rate of around 225 euros per month.
The social welfare association VdK firmly rejected this. This would be a "hidden contribution increase," said association president Verena Bentele to the newspapers of the Funke Media Group. "This goes against the principle of solidarity in statutory health insurance and would particularly burden women and families with low incomes."
The goal of reform must be to relieve contribution payers without benefit cuts, Bentele continued. What is crucial are structural reforms that balance revenues and expenditures "without endangering the quality of care." Bentele also rejected higher medication co-payments or a return to practice fees as "antisocial additional burdens" "that would particularly affect chronically ill people, elderly people, and low-income patients."
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