According to expert estimates, the additional contributions will have to rise drastically in 2022 at the latest if the deficit of the statutory health insurance funds (German: GKV) is to be absorbed. This is because the planned gentle increase in additional contributions by the Bundesrat will not cover the deficit that will arise in 2022. The expenditures of the statutory health insurances are higher than their incomes. A double-digit billion euro hole with a subsequent crash is imminent. Sigrid König, as head of the Association of Company Health Insurance Funds in the German state of Bavaria, as well as the “GKV-Spitzenverband” (Central Federal Association of Health Insurance Funds) and the AOK federal association expressed a drastically formulated criticism: 16.6 billion euros will be missing from the funds in 2021. One-time aid of eight billion euros from the reserves of the health insurance funds as an asset levy and five billion euros from the federal government can partially plug this large hole for 2021. The remaining 3.6 billion euros are Corona pandemic expenses, according to König. The AOK estimates these costs at only 3.4 billion euros. These pandemic-related expenses would be capped by the Bundesrat’s decision to increase additional contributions. However, many experts, including Jens Marin Hoyer, head of the AOK’s national association, fear that the German healthcare system will collapse the year after next. The latter predicts an even larger hole in the SHI funds of more than 17 billion euros. In order to absorb this deficit, the additional contributions would have to be raised from today’s average of 1.3 percent to almost double that (2.5 percent). Already for 2021, at the latest however, 2022, insured ones of the GKV threaten therefore substantial contribution increases and/or benefit cuts.
Source: : kma-online.de