These health insurance companies offer many additional services

Professional tooth cleaning

After the contribution rate, many insured are interested in the assumption of the costs of prophylaxis.

(Photo: Imago/Westend61)

Dusseldorf “We are always there for you and will help you in a spirit of trust” – health insurance companies use this or similar slogans to attract customers. Some policyholders take this full-bodied service promise too literally. “We had an insured person who called from the airport and asked that we bring him a foreign health certificate before departure,” says Claudia Berger, an employee of a BKK in North Rhine-Westphalia, who does not want her real name published. “I then explained to him that our service is broad, but it doesn’t go that far.”

If the worst comes to the worst, people with statutory insurance hope and build on the voluntary offers of their health insurance company. The overwhelming majority, however, primarily looks at a low contribution rate when choosing a provider. This is the result of a study on the customer orientation of statutory health insurance companies (GKV), which the German Financial Service Institute (DFSI) created together with the comparison portal Kassensuche exclusively for the Handelsblatt.

For this purpose, the Cologne-based institute evaluated more than 40,000 inquiries that were made between July 2021 and June 2022 via the “gesetzliche Krankenkassen.de” portal. On this page of Kassensuche, those with statutory health insurance can query what additional services individual health insurance companies offer beyond the statutory standard. A list of a total of 165 services is available for this purpose.

In doing so, the DFSI examined the 50 additional services most requested by the insured, which health insurance companies offer the highest degree of fulfillment in relation to the requirements. For reasons of space, the seven most frequently mentioned are shown in the table.

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Based on the inquiries, the DFSI evaluated which health insurance companies are particularly well suited to the wishes of their insured with their range of services. The methodology here: The more often the visitors to the site have requested a specific additional service, the higher the pro rata point value that the cash registers were able to collect in the evaluation.

Irrespective of the additional services, all health insurance companies must fulfill the services stipulated in the Social Security Code. In the case of skin cancer prevention, for example, this is an early detection examination from the age of 35. Health insurance companies that already offer this examination for younger people can collect points in the evaluation.

A favorable contribution rate in combination with extensive additional services, with which insured persons can save health costs, is possible. As in the previous year, the HKK ranks first among the nationwide cash registers. With a contribution rate of 15.29 percent, it is currently one of the cheapest providers on the market. At the top of the regionally open cash registers is the IKK Südwest. The Securvita takes second place. Compared to HKK, both providers are 0.81 percentage points more expensive. In return, they offer a wide range of additional services.

During the evaluation period, the proportion of queries to the comparison portal’s contribution calculator was 77.7 percent, once again up on the figure for the previous year (75.6 percent). The contribution rates for cheaper and more expensive health insurers on the market are comparatively close together. The difference was 1.3 percentage points at the top. “Since the cheapest and the most expensive health insurance companies are only regionally open, the difference for most insured persons is only around one percent. As a result, people with statutory health insurance cannot actually save that much by choosing a cheap health insurer, even with a higher salary, because the employer pays half of that,” Thomas Lemke, Managing Director of the DFSI, points out.

Thomas Adolph, managing director of the “gesetzliche Krankenkassen.de” portal, observes that many insured persons may set the wrong priorities. “Interestingly, visitors to our portal are predominantly looking for dental services and there for features that are not so valuable. The relatively inexpensive professional tooth cleaning, for example, has been at the top of the queries for years,” states the health insurance expert. “This is remarkable, because many insurance companies offer additional services in other areas, some of which are significantly more valuable – such as domestic help after an accident or extended home nursing care.”

Consider the emergency

However, experience has shown that many people are happy to put aside the question of who will provide care in the event of an accident or serious illness. If the worst comes to the worst, the necessary additional services can quickly add up to far more than a thousand euros. The costs of comprehensive medical care, for example in the case of pregnancy or check-ups outside of the standard benefit, plus measures such as travel vaccinations and osteopathic treatments, quickly add up to four-digit values. A half or a full percentage point less in the contribution hardly compensates for that.

So where individual health insurers grant individual services to the equivalent of 300 or 400 euros per year, others pay nothing at all or only offer the statutory standard. In many cases, this is good and sufficient, and here Germany is impressive compared to many neighboring countries. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why many policyholders look more at the price than at the additional services. “Anyone who goes to the doctor or comes to the hospital receives the same care upon presentation of their insurance card – regardless of which health insurance company they are insured with,” says Adolph. “But many additional services offer the insured real added value.”

However: Insured persons cannot be sure that they will still be entitled to the additional benefits they receive today five months from now. At the turn of the year, many health insurance companies will in all probability have to adjust their contribution rates. “Not every additional service will then still be affordable,” predicts expert Adolph. “But we know from the past that most providers do without a yo-yo strategy and try to keep their members on the ball with stable services.”

More: Statutory health insurance is becoming more expensive – when is it worth switching to private health insurance?

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