As early as November there were warnings that public health insurance contributions would rise for millions in Germany at the start of 2026, now the increased rates have been made official.
Coming just after the announcement of a federal plan to cap costs at hospitals, which was intended to help stabilise health insurance contribution rates in the coming year, the health ministry is facing criticism for not doing enough.
Meanwhile public health insurance plan holders can expect that at least a few euros more will be withheld from their pay checks for their coverage in the coming year.
Large health insurance companies Techniker Krankenkasse (TK), which insures 12.3 million people in Germany, and DAK-Gesundheit which covers 5.4 million people, announced on Friday that they would increase their contributions at the turn of the year.
The additional contribution to TK will increase from 2.45 to 2.69 percent. At DAK the contribution is set to rise from 2.8 to 3.2 percent.
In Germany, statutory health insurance contributions consist of two parts: a uniform general rate set nationally (14.6 percent split equally between employer and employee) and a variable additional contribution set by each insurance provider.
The federal government had promised to keep the contributions stable, but the health insurance companies said that the austerity package, which passed the Bundesrat on Friday, was too small. The package implements certain spending brakes, especially at hospitals, and was intended to reduce health care costs and therefore reduce the need for insurance companies to increase additional contribution rates.
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Blame game
Green Party expert Janosch Dahmen told Welt that the government's austerity package was a "fundamental political failure". He added that financial problems for the health insurance companies can only be solved with comprehensive reforms, such as putting strict limits on drug prices.
For their part, the public health insurance companies had also effectively blamed the federal government for their contribution rate hikes, suggesting that the lack of broader governmental support left them no choice but to raise the contribution levels.
Federal Health Minister Nina Warken (CDU) largely rejected this criticism.
"If the health insurance companies say that only the others are to blame, they are making it too easy for themselves," Warken told SĂĽddeutsche Zeitung. "Everyone has responsibility, including the health insurance companies."
The Health Minister suggests that the government had done what it could to reduce the financial burden on insurance companies, but that contribution hikes by individual companies were ultimately out of her hands.
"We cannot control the health insurance contributions as precisely as the contributions in the other social insurance schemes," she added.
Government health care expenditure has steadily increased. It exceeded €500 billion in 2022, according to Germany's statistics office, and remained at that level in 2023 even as big pandemic spending wound down.Â
Still state and local authorities, as well as the health insurance companies themselves, say that their share of health care costs are also rising. Healthcare expenses per capita have been growing as Germany's population gets older.
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Conflicts arise around particular costs that fall between the cracks and then are left to municipalities to cover. For example, the bill for ambulances that are called "incorrectly". The city of Essen had recently proposed co-payments for patients who call an ambulance to offset this cost, but then scrapped the proposal.
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