Statutory health insurance companies expect financial problems for 2023

Berlin When Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach informed the capital’s journalists about the current corona situation on Friday, the SPD politician also commented on the Ukraine war: “The world has better things to do than deal with Putin’s great power fantasies.” Lauterbach was thinking of global construction sites such as climate change or the pandemic.

But a national construction site is right on his doorstep – namely the foreseeable financial problems with the statutory health insurance (GKV). In an overview available to the Handelsblatt, their central association assumes a financing gap of 17 billion euros for the coming year.

In order to close these, the additional contribution, which only the insured pay, would have to increase by 1.0 to 1.1 percentage points – if the legislator does not take countermeasures.

One reason for the expected financial deficit is that, as things stand at present, there will be no money in 2023 with which the federal government has compensated for additional burdens caused by the corona pandemic and stabilized the additional contribution at 1.3 percent.