As there are no concrete figures yet – estimates are also very difficult to make at the moment – on the additional costs of the virus pandemic for the statutory health insurance funds, but health insurance funds are nevertheless afraid of losing their financial stability, they, in the form of the top officials in a meeting with the BMG on 11 May 2020, are calling for a higher federal subsidy from tax money to the health fund. There is also a discussion on whether the SHI estimators‘ group, which actually always meets in October and consists of experts from the BMG, the Federal Office for Social Security (BAS) and the central association of the SHI funds, should now meet earlier than usual to discuss the average additional contribution rate, which currently stands at 1.1 per cent, but could rise to 1.4 per cent if health insurance funds were not able to fall back on a non-repayable federal subsidy. For this reason, health insurance companies or their top officials have developed a concept for talks with health policymakers, which will be presented on 11th May. According to this concept, guaranteed allocations by the BAS are to be paid out to health insurers, because the BAS had suspended allocations for a few days or paid them out in a partially reduced form, which led to liquidity bottlenecks for some insurers. Insurers, therefore, demand financial stability and liquidity from the health fund, which could also be increased by federal loans. Since the health insurance companies currently have to keep intensive care beds available for the so-called prevention of danger and each bed kept free costs 50,000 euros, these expenses and additional costs must be compensated by a „federal subsidy to cover expenses“, according to the demand of the health insurance companies, which do not want to use the contributions of the insured persons for this purpose, but rather funds from tax money. The demand for a non-repayable federal subsidy, therefore, comes as no surprise, because federal loans during the year, which would have to be repaid by the end of the year, would tear a large liquidity hole in the purse of the statutory cancer funds. For this reason, the federal government’s liquidity assistance to the Health Fund is to be converted this year from a repayable to a non-repayable federal subsidy. In addition to a higher tax subsidy, a health expert is also considering assistance from private health insurance to cover the additional costs of the COVID 19 pandemic, which cannot yet be quantified.
