Health insurance options for a PhD student

Hi,

I do my PhD at TU-Munich. I am not employed at the university. I get scholarship. I went to TK for insurance and they are not ready to give insurance since I am not enrolled as a student. I am not a student nor an employee, hence no insurance!! Anybody faced this problem before? Any solution other than a private insurance?

TIA,
Sands.

then what are you? don't you have to be a student to do a PhD? how can you do a PhD without being affiliated with the university? Do you not have a contract with the uni to do a PhD? do you do this completely voluntarily? how did you get into the country then? on a tourist visa?

I also don't understand. The PhD students I know are all enrolled with the university (TU as well) and all have the scraps of paper that pass as student ID around here.

Anyway, if you're neither registered or employed by the university, then you answered your own question -- private insurance.

@Sands
You are male and still young. Private insurance will probably be cheaper for somebody like you than the state one and offers you better service. Get yourself informed. Good luck!

Not really, because if he's registered as a student he would pay just €55 a month.

I was a PhD student in Munich but was only required to be enrolled at the university for one or two semesters, since I was working at one of the Max Planck institutes. That said, I got my insurance through the institute (and a great rate it was - 85 EUR per month, and that was the expensive option with the pregnancy coverage and good dental. The cheap one was 45 EUR per month).

Who do you have your scholarship through? Surely that institution should have some way of providing insurance coverage for you?

More details about the issue.

Not everybody who does PhD is a student. Generally one is employed at the specific institute while doing PhD and he/she gets paid by the prof. And his/her title is "Promotionsstudium". In that case, the insurance is taken care of by the employer.

In my case, I get scholarship from DFG and they dont take care of insurance. I have to do it for myself. Enrolling as a student is a loooong process for which I applied a couple of months back and still the authorities dont have any clue about how long it would take!! (In my case, it took some extra time to convert my Indian marklist to German one)

In the beginning, I went to TK and got insured first with the belief that I can provide my student Id in two months. And as I mentioned the process seems to be never ending and the insurance had to be cancelled.

This is the status. How much I'll have to pay for a private insurance? (I am 24, Healthy). Student insurance is 57 Euro/Month.

Thanks,
Sands.

I'm a Phd student in Munich with the Max Planck Institute and insured with Martens & Prahl in Leipzig Waldstrasse 52-54 04105 Leipzig, for about 33 euro a month, i've had them pay for my medical bills for the last ten months without problems and the authorities at Poccistrasse have no problem accepting their insurance. I made the contract through fax and they withdraw their 33 euro every month without problems so go for the student classic mit Unfall/Haftpflicht, call them on 0341140766

@kenya - That won't do sands any good, as the Max Planck institutes have special negotiated rates with the companies they deal with AND they pay a huge portion of the cost, so you don't have to. There's not a chance in hell that an individual can get insurance that cheap.

Well, you'll have to pay a lot more than €57, that's for sure. Probably somewhere around the €300 mark, unless you can get expat insurance from India.

I'm not really sure why it would take you so long to become registered as a student though.

Not true, my ex used to pay about €150 per month at Signal Iduna and he was quite a bit older than Sands as well. The older you are, the more expensive it gets. If Sands could however get something like Kenya suggested, that would be by far the better deal it seems.

Doesn't the TK offer something like a "freiwillige" insurance that anybody could be part of?