The additional contribution to statutory health insurance rises to a new record high.
(Photo: imago images/Martin Bäuml Fotodesign)
Berlin Many Germans are unlikely to recognize their first payslip in the new year. The additional contribution to statutory health insurance rises to a new record high. Unemployment insurance is also becoming more expensive for the first time since 2011.
Less net than gross: This is a bitter New Year’s greeting for the working population and their employers. That’s hard to convey, especially in times when many things are becoming more expensive anyway and some are already warning of de-industrialization, such as former Siemens boss Joe Kaeser or most recently chain saw entrepreneur Nikolas Stihl.
What are the higher contributions actually for?, many will ask. Germany has one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the world, but it is in ruins in many places. It’s like paying rent for a penthouse in downtown Munich but living in a garage.
The Christmas holidays gave the contributors an impressive reminder of what they get for their money. On Christmas Eve, intensive care physicians sent an urgent appeal to the population not to go to the emergency room with “minor illnesses”. Many teams are currently overloaded.
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Nevertheless, many clinics face an unprecedented wave of bankruptcies in 2023, according to a survey by the German Hospital Society (DKG) on Monday.
New editions, tough reforms
Children’s hospitals where there is no bed left, nursing facilities that can no longer find staff, antipyretic juices for children that are sold out: At least in the German health care system, there was no good news on the holidays.
The mistakes of the past are taking revenge: there are too many medical services that are not needed. These inefficiencies have manifested themselves in the system. Unnecessary knee and hip operations are famous examples, too many hospital beds on average are another. That burns money that is missing elsewhere. The reasons for this go back a long way.
>> Read here: Lauterbach’s risky recipe against drug shortages
The past 20 years have been a time without radical reforms and full of household coffers, in which the problems have been filled up with ever higher tax subsidies. The traffic light coalition and Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) are not responsible for this.
But the minister let a year go by without doing anything better. Although reforms have been announced – for example in the area of flat rates per case – they are still a long way from being implemented.
At the same time, he announced new spending requests without saving elsewhere: More money for children’s clinics and manufacturers of generic drugs and higher wages for nurses are just a few examples.
In 2023, the reserves of the health insurance companies will be largely used up, the costs in the health care system will probably continue to rise – and the deficit will climb to new records. If nothing happens, the misery then lands again with the contributor.
More: Health insurance, care, pension: Social security could become so expensive for contributors by 2030