Health Care Insurance
Health care insurance in Germany is split in several parts. The largest part of 85% of the population is covered by a basic health insurance plan provided by statute, formally insured under the legislation set with the Sozialgesetzbuch V (SGB V), which provides a standard level of coverage. The remainder of 15% opt for private health insurance, which frequently offers additional benefits.
The government partially reimburses the costs for low-wage workers, whose premiums are capped at a predetermined value. Higher wage workers pay a premium based on their salary. They may also opt for private insurance. This may result in substantial savings for younger individuals in good health. With age and illness, private premiums will rise and the insured will usually cancel their private insurance, turning to the government option.
Reimbursement is on a fee-for-service basis, but the number of physicians allowed to accept Statutory Health Insurance in a given locale is regulated by the government and professional medical societies. Co-payments were introduced in the 1980s in an attempt to prevent overutilization.
Read more about this topic: Healthcare In Germany
Famous quotes containing the words health, care and/or insurance:
“In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them; from that have issued endless consequences.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“For there can be no whiter whiteness than this one:
An insurance man’s shirt on its morning run.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)