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This article gives an introduction to health insurance in Germany. The information is targetted primarily for English-speaking expatriates living in the country. See also:
Health insurance
Basic introduction
Health insurance has been obligatory for everyone in Germany, including the self-employed, since 2007. Medical treatment can be hugely expensive.
For those employed full-time by a company, the employer pays half of the insurance contributions, the other half comes out of the employee's salary. The employee's half
usually totals around 10% of their gross salary. When starting work with a company usually the employee won't have to worry too much about how the system works. The
company will automatically sign them up with an insurance company and the contributions automatically deducted from the salary. Sometimes the employee may be
asked if they have a preferred insurance company. It is recommended to simply go with one of the big names, like "TK" (has the most information in English, used to only
accept engineers and technical personnel) or "AOK" (don't speak English, default insurer if you don't choose a different one) or the smaller "SBK" (evolved from the
insurance for Siemens employees, small but caring). They are all pretty similar in their cover, but TK and SBK regularly win the title of "best" public health insurances in
the user rankings.
For the self-employed, they pay the full contribution themselves.
There are two types of health insurance in Germany. These are the "public" and "private" systems. This system often causes considerable confusion. Full details are
given below.
Summary
It is now up to each individual to check the services offered by foreign insurance companies with regard to his/her needs and security requirements and then decide which
is the overall best option. As it is, an employer can not force you to legally use a German private health insurance at all. But the computer system may not be able to
handle having no employer-share of health insurance or other such administration problems... And you should make sure to pick an insurance company that has a good
track record in actually paying you the money if you need to get expensive treatment or hospitalization. Otherwise even a fortnight in a German hospital with surgery can
easily run up a bill of tens of thousands of euros. And finally you need to decide if you plan to stay in Germany only for a short period of time or for several years or maybe
the rest of your life: in the later cases, the German insurance will give you a good deal on the long run.
Conclusion
Even though this will of course sound somewhat selfish considering my own profession, if you can opt out of the public insurance system the best advice is to take an
independent broker to help you understand your options and to guide you through the legal jungle here in Germany.
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independent broker to help you understand your options and to guide you through the legal jungle here in Germany.
Good luck to all of you,
Patrick Ott
CR&Cie. Insurance and Finance
See also
Private health insurance company recommendations
Public health insurance for people who are neither employees nor self-employed
Public health insurance for the self-employed
German state health insurance cover while abroad
Search results for health insurance
German insurances
Germany
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