As predicted: health insurance premiums up & only workers pay

A perfect example for our post from 2013 "Being right ain't fun".

Last year, the German government changed one of the decades old rules of paying for workers' health insurance. And we and some other cynics predicted a bad outcome for employees.

The bad outcome is here.

Traditionally, German social security and health insurance premiums for employees was based on a 50/50 split, the employer paid half, and the other half came out of the employee's paycheck. In some sectors, the employer paid more than 50% of social security contributions.

What looked like a fair system to many, was a seen as a disadvantage for employers by others. Breaking the even split has been on the agenda of neo-liberals for a long time, and last year, they succeeded in health insurance.

The employer contribution was capped at the existing level, and the contribution by employees was turned into a variable contribution. At the time, the health minister justified this with the prospect of savings to employees because workers were also given the right to freely switch between insurance providers.

The government did not particularly emphasize that premiums could go up, of course.

Why tell workers that any future premium hikes would be paid by them alone, with the employer sitting tight on the capped percentage?

The blogster and a few spoil sports pointed out that a drop in premiums was highly improbable based on the freely available historic data.

Since early October is traditionally the time when insurance providers announce the rates for the next year, it comes as no surprise that a hike of 0.2 to 0.3 percent was announced this week.

To be paid exclusively by employees as well as the self-employed (who pay both the employer and the employee portions).

Trade unions are unhappy, naturally, but the conservative media have found a culprit: the workers themselves.

An OpEd in yesterday's Frankfurter Allgemeine told workers they needed to make their voices heard earlier to avoid such burdens.

And, of course, it's all good because it is "in the interest of German competitiveness".

[Update 1/10/2016] With the hikes in effect since 1 January, newspapers are finally voicing opinions instead of simply re-printing press releases of insurance providers.

[Update 5/6/2016] Out of pocket payments or co-pay for those insured by the public non-profit insurance carriers continues to increase, too. As reported here, patients handed over some 3.8 billion euros as co-pay in 2015, which is a 6 percent increase over the year before. This comes at a near zero official inflation rate. While the amount of co-pay for each individual transaction is pretty low (up to 10% but no more than 10 euros per medication or per fully covered procedure), coverage itself has been on the retreat for decades, which means that the effective burden has been rising steadily.