Starting a new job and getting health insurance

I am starting a new job in May and am not sure how the "whole working in Germany" and "health insurance" things work.

Ok, so my boss is applying for my work permit, but how do I get health insurance? At the moment I have no bank account so is it possible to rock up to a health insurance company somewhere and sign up? Or does my boss do this too?

You do it yourself. Go to a website with one of the insurers, sign yourself up, they will do the rest with your boss.

Is sign up free?

Yep.

Ok I'm having a bit of trouble with this. I have seen the BKK insurance is meant to be good on another thread, does anyone know the website? My German is terrible so a link to the sign up page would be awesome.

thanks!

This link provides a list of all insurance companies: Liste aller Betriebskrankenkassen

It is not actually a sign up page though.

Thanks, hmm anyone know how I actually manage to sign up for this thing?

I think it would be easier if you pick up one of the offices on the list that Nick linked, call, ask if they speak english and then ask them how the process goes. From the website I could see that you have to print the subscription form (wherever that is, I didn't look for it much) and send it by post. So it will in any case be necessary that at a certain moment you get in touch with them. You could also try the TK (tk-online.de). Some people there speak english, when I did my insurance for the first time I did it in english. Good luck.

Sorry folks but I honestly dont have time to read through the forums to get the answer. I did have a quick search but nothing directly answering this was visible in the limited time I had to look.

I started a new job in Frankfurt last week (from UK, permanent employment) and have had to sign up for health insurance.

According to my employer this is compulsory?

Its supposedly costing over 200euros a month - dont know what type of policy but that was the cheapest option I was given.

I was made aware that the deductions from my salary would be big but any tips on ways to get round this or reduce what I am paying.

Many Thanks

200€???

Thats cheap.. Dont moan or they may well just make you do it all yourself...

200 for your share is cheap, there has been changes to the laws here, so all newcomers to Germany have to go to state insurance, a super rip off, so, if they found you insurance for 200 a month, that is good.
There is no getting around paying for medical insurance here.
Welcome to Germany and TT

OK, I will settle for that then

Well, i am paying 165 euro for my share. It is private not state. If u are not married with chilldren, going to state insurance is not wise.

If your an employee than I wouldn't worry about it, the company will sign you up automaticly for one of the public insurance companies, you'll get a health card in the mail and your health insurance is part of the payroll taxes that everyone pays. You do have the option of private health care but unless your 100% fluent in German it isn't worth the hassle. The main difference from the rest of Europe is in Germany you don't have the option of purchasing private health care on top of the state plan. for example in Spain my wife (I'm not legal yet so I'm not paying any taxes on my inocme) is paying for public health care via payroll taxes as well we have purchased private healthcare which we pay out of pocket. This isn't possible in Germany. You have to go either public or private and regardless it comes out of your pretax income. Generally speaking there is very little difference between the various insurance companies just take what ever option the employer signs you up for. As for "how much" it costs per month, it's really a meanless number becuase it's part of your payroll taxes. What matters is the take home.

If your already an employee than more than likely they've already signed you up automatically, check with HR but you should get a Krankenkasse card in the mail in a few days, that's all you need to get healthcare, other than the 10 euro co-pay . If your with AOK you will occasionally get a form in the mail asking for family details which you mail back. I used to get them once or twice a year, never knew if I filed them out properly but I never had a problem with my card at the doctor.

This is the problem. Most companies will sign u up for public insurance which is more expensive if u are single. I think there is a minimum limit to go for a private insurance. If u are above that limit, and u are single go for the private one. It will be cheaper.

Health Insurance is very complex in Germany and particularly more so with the new legislation from 1 April 2007 Many people who are already insured, may not be subject to and thus may not be entirely conversant with, this new legislation. In other word the rules have changed - and more changes are still proposed.

Not everyone has the same set of circumstances so don't assume that what someone says is their own experience, however well intentioned, that this will apply to your own personal circumstances - now.

DO PLEASE CONTACT ME and I will give you a full assessment of your personal situation and advice on which type of insurance you may be eligible for or not.

At least AOK and TK both have limited web sites in english by the way - or look at www.spectruminternational.eu

tell your new boss you want the cheapest public insurance there is. by default, they might sign you up for AOK and that is one of the most expensive, taking about 15% of your salary for health insurance. by going with a cheaper one (which by law have to offer most of the same major services), you can save 30-50 Euros a month. by going cheaper, i could save 20 Euro a month.

I would take the above advice and give Spectrum a ring, health care like everything else in Germany is overly complicated.

Hey everyone,

I was just wondering about something...What's the deal on health insurance? It was not mentioned in my contract.Is it automatically deducted along with the tax deductions or does that mean that I am not provided with health insurance?

Thanx in advance

Have a great day

Topics merged by admin

There are about a million threads on this.. do a search.. either way, if you have a full time job, you will be ok with health insurance one way or the other..

I myself has started a new job in Germany for the first time.This is what my company & my consultant has told me:
From April 01,2007 as per new legislation,if somebody is starting a new job,he can opt for private medical insurance if & only if he can :

1. Prove his income above 47800/-(approx) per annum
2. He has been insured privately for the last three years

If you fall under tha above criteria,you are eligible for private insurance otherwise you are stuck with public health insurance.

Why do you say "stuck" with public health insurance? I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

The only thing wrong with it is that its ridiculously expensive.

Do you have any idea how much calamaaaaaaaari you can get for all that money you spend on health insurance??!! Crikey!

First of all - unfortunately or not - health insurance is mandatory in Germany, so there is not much need for complaining (ok, I had once NO insurance, but a car accident and learnt my lesson the hard way...)

The amount you are going to pay depends on several factors. At first, you'll be paying a percentage of your gross income, not a set amount like in the US. It may be around 13% and 16% or so. Further you have to compare specific insurances branches as even the same companies to not charge the same if located in a different state. So insurance X in Nordrhein-Westfalen may not be that bad in comparision. In Hessen, insurance X may already be way up there at the top in regards to premiums.

What I would do, is asking your Human Resources lady and a couple of your new coworkers who they are using and check these insurance websites to compare the information.
I've always done that...

Hope that helps!

You won't pay 13% to 16% yourself, you'll only pay half that amount and your employer will pay the other half...

Many thanks

If you are eligible as an employee for private health insurance or not is determined by factors explained already above. Whether it makes sense to be publicly or privately insured depends on a lot of factors:

a) biological factors like age, gender and health status
b)if you are single, married (with the other partner being publicly or privately insured) and/or with children
c) how long you want to stay in Germany

you will need some professional help here. Please also check the WIKI on Health insurance here on Toytown after another 7-10 days because I am currently working on a new version including all the new development from health insurance.

If you go public, check for the IKK DIREKT. According to the consumer magazin FINANZTEST it is currently the least expansive health insurance with around only 12% deduction. Since the coverage among public insurance is more or less regulated by law, you might as well go for the least expansive and - if you want to have more coverage for dental replacement or for single-room in hospital, you can always use an add-on-private-insurance with the saved money.

Cheerio

Thanx everyone..I just fot an email from my employer and looks like I'm gonna be automatically insured by the government (my annual gross income is less than 47800e), which is fine by me and the taxes..well..what can I do...but...PENSION...WHY DO I HAVE TO PAY PENSION???...IM ONLY STAYING FOR TWO YEARS!!!

do a search on this, but as far as I'm aware you can get some (all?) of your pension contribution money back if you leave Germany within 5 years.

Hi,

I have just moved to Essen in NRW and want to get some health insurance.

As I want to study at Essen Uni I asked the International Office how to get public health insurance. I was told that I can't get public health insurance as a student and, in fact, couldn't ever (student or not) because of my advanced age - 36.

Consequently I am in the process of signing up with Expacare because the private health insurance is too expensive.

It seems to me that I have 'fallen through the cracks' of this convoluted (not to mention expensive) system!

Does anyone now if I can actually go on public insurance and, if so, how?

I also intend to get the following:

Rental insurance
Public liability
legal liability

Will this protect me in this increasingly litigatory world?

I know I'm whining but I promise to stop quite soon.

Thanks!

Topics merged by admin

If you paid national insurance contributions in the UK you can get a form E104 from the inland revenue in Newcastle that proves you have paid into the UK system. Public insurers then will accept you but you will still have to pay although i think students get reduced rates. If you have come from S. Africa then I do not know how you get into the public system but the German Embassy London website might give you some pointers and i think there is a number you can ring on it as well.

Hi Pickle.Not sure what you mean by "rental insurance". If the aim is to defend yourself in case of hassle with a landlord, then that comes in a package with legal insurance.From personal experience, it´s definitely a good idea to have both legal and liability insurance in this country. Depending on what you go for in detail, both insurances together will cost around 200-300 euros a year.

Pickle: in your situation there appears to be only one way to get into the public health insurance for really low costs to you and that is to get a so-called 401-EURO job with full package of social welfare, pension and the likes. In a case like this the employer pays around 100 EUR per month and that covers your health insurance plus unemployment insurance plus pension. While unemployment and pension does not help you much with regards to the money involved, this is still a very decent deal from public health insurance. Probably beats ExpatCare or any other international health insurance and for sure any German private health insurance at your age.

The other insurances you want to know about are the following:
a) private or third party liability insurance (German: Private Haftpflichtversicherung). A good one will cost you around 60-80 EUR a year only and covers you against all claims from third persons if by accident or negligence you destroy someone elses property or hurt another person. Typcial case is riding your bike and bumping first into another person and than into a parked car. this can easily cost you a lot of money and unless you weren't dead drunk your insurance would cover the claims and help you to fend of wrongful claims as well. This insurance is a must for everyone, because not having it means you run a terrible risk of loosing all your savings and your future income from a simple moment of being careless.
with rental insurance you probably refer to tenant's property and valuable or content insurance which covers all your belongings. This insurance is depending on the size of your apartment as well as from the total value of your belongings (please compute the value if everything at your place has to be bought for new, not the current value). If you want to make sure that you are never under-covered with this insurance, you can compute the total value for coverage with the simple formula sqm times 650.- EUR. if you insure this amount, the insurance will guarantee "Unterversicherungsverzicht" which means that every item stolen or destroyed will be reimbursed in full. Without it and if the insurance dedects that the value of all your belongings is forinstance 120% of the insured amount, you will only get 80% for each item reimbursed, even if only one thing worth a 1.000.- EUR was stolend or destroyed. This is a nice-to-have insurance in most cases if you would financially survive if all your stuff would get stolen or destroyed. If you live in a low-risk area and just have some IKEA stuff and no special electronic equipment, this insurance might not be too important. It is always second in row to private liability insurance, looking at the budget you might have for insurances.
c) legal liability insurance covers you in disputes with for instance landlords, in traffic, with some governement institutions (usually not "Ausländerbehörde", though) and employer. Since Germans love to go to court for every little bit of rubbish, this can protect you very well. In my perception it is even more important than , but this really depends on your property's value.

Whatever you plan to do in the future: if you intend to stay in Germany for long time, now in your age is also the time to think about a disability-to-work insurance (Berunfsunfähigkeitsversicherung). This is together with health insurance and private liability insurance one of the three must-have insurances, even though only 20% of the German population has one. Bad risk assessement, I am afraid.

Should you need more detailed information, get an independent insurance broker... if you read the disclaimer you understand why I recommend that ;-)

Cheerio

Starshallow... can you please elaborate this 401-EURO thing?

Try to, even though this indeed not exactly my field of expertise:

In a situation where you are not more allowed to step back to public insurance (for instance after having opted out some years before in order to join private German or international health insurance) there is one backdoor open where the public health insurance has to take you back (until you are 55 years or older, than it won't work) and that is when you pick up employment with a monthly salary beneath the threshold.

The easiest way to do so is to have a friend, family member or anyone else sign you up on a 400 EUR job. This is a job where the employee does not pay any taxes (unless he has other sources of income as well from freelancing for instance) and social security whereas the employer pays 100 EUR on top of the 400 EUR for social security, amongst which is the payment for public health insurance.

Now if you do the math and reimburse your friend/family member for the 100.- EUR payments somehow in work or money, this is an extremely sweet deal to get health insurance. While this may border on the gray zone between legality and illegality, in some cases it may be the only way to get someone with very low income into a low-cost health insurance.

More information including a table for 401-800 EUR jobs you find here: http://www.finanztip.de/recht/arbeitsrecht/mini-jobs.htm

Hope that satisfies the curiousity,
Cheerio and happy holiday

I went to a couple of Makler (insurance brokers) at the suggestion of some friends and ex-colleagues so as to sort out PKV (private health insurance) and other insurance foo.

Everyone seemed to recommend MLP, although half-heartedly. I went there and spoke to a couple of their folks and found them pretty average/ unimpressive as well, not to mention ignorant in international issues. Does anyone else have any feedback on them, or does anyone specific MLP consultant? I understand that they are all freelance so quality varies immensely. Maybe I just had bad luck and met the worst of the batch.

I actually ended up signing for my plans through an independent insurance broker named Klawdija Pongracic (0173.23.07.441, klawdija.pongracic@ t-online.de). She speaks only some English but takes a lot of time to explain everything in simple German terms, and to find exactly the right fit for you. This is in contrast to what I felt from MLP, that the brokers I met were mainly trying to increase their client base and maximise their margin, noting anything that would possibly increase the insurance costs.

Pipa: first of all: there are I think three different broker/agent advertising here on Toytown who all speak excellent English and have at least somehow spezialised on catering to ExPats----- did you not even check that out and try to contact one of them? Might have saved you a lot of huzzle...

MLP is a distribution company, the people working for MLP are not "independent broker" according to the new regulations but only "multiple agents" which means that their mother company has set up special commission contracts with a limited number of insurance and investment companies and the salesmen are more or less bound by the company to offer only those products. They are better than a simple insurance salesmen who can only offer you the products from one insurance but only marginally so. Just check with what products from what companies they did the most turnover and you understand (MLP is publicly listed at the stock exchange and therefore this information is available).

If you are happy with Klawdija Pongracic now, good for. But make sure a couple of things: a) ask her/him (sorry, don't see the gender from the name) if he/she is an independent broker or just an agent for one or a couple of insurances. If the latter, have the quotes checked by independent sources. if you are unsure that you understood everything, once again: there are people advertising her on TT an contributing a lot of free information in the chats, so why not give them a chance to help you properly?

Cheerio

Hi,

I'm searching desperately through this and other sites because I'm not terribly clever.

I'm a Brit living with a German girl (unmarried). I have four kids - two German with her, one at home in Blighty with the ex and my son here now. My son is working and requires health insurance. Can I add him to our mutual policy? His employer (trustworthy friend) will have to pay 300 a month health insurance otherwise. Anyone have any answers to this (apologies for lengthy dull details)
CW

Oh he's twenty and th company we're with is securvita

chesswoog: if your son has got a job (i.e. is in employment with a monthly salary here in Germany) and if his salary is below the threshold for opting out of the public system, he will be compulsory insured with a public insurance and there is nothing either you or your friend as employer can do about it. Basically, children can only stay so long and the umbrella of a public "family insurance" if they don't generate income from employment or selfemployment (appart from some small holiday jobs, that is).

Cheerio

And the employer would only have to pay 300 a month health insurance for the kid if he's earning above, like, 50 grand a year. Otherwise he'll have to pay around 7% of what he's paying the kid, but that's normal and he should expect that if he's employing someone..

Thanks,

that was a help. In the end its as you say. They pay him about 300 or so and he is insured.

Hi
I know there is some stuff on here about this already but it's all a bit confusing. I have a new job and need to provide them with a Krankenkasse number - I was advised by the secretary not to pay over 12% as this exensive so I was just wondering if anyone has any advice on where I get get a good deal? I hear AOK are good but expensive - what % do they take?

Also, I read something about getting payments transfered to the NHS - is this possible with many policies? As I will be going back the England in about a year or so and would like to see my payments go there if possible as then I won't have a lot missed paymenys...

Any good advice would be greatly appreciated, though I have to get it sorted within the next week before Christmas and I start working.

Many Thanks

Topics merged by admin

Check the FINANZTEST at your nearest newspaper store, they have an area (yellow pages at the rear of the magazine) where you can find the least expensive public health insurances for each German state. If you are just interested in the normal coverage which is the same at all public insurances since it is regulated by law, you might take the IKK DIREKT because they are around 12%. AOK will be 13,5% or more in your area. The HRM people at your company should help you to set up the insurance...

Cheerio

Hi.. on the subject. I've been insured for the past 2 years and will now drop my working hours from 7 down to 2 days per week.
How does this leave my Health Insurance situation?

Do I need to then take out private cover, or is this sufficient to warrant no changes? Or something else ?!

Thanks!

Howard: just answered your similar question from Nov which somehow escaped my notice, sorry. check the other thread for the answer in order for me to avoid double-posting, o.k.?

Cheerio

HI guys

I post something on here a whiel ago about Krankenkasse and the message seems to have disappeared.

I have a new job and need krankenkasse - I have a quote from AXA PPP which is really good for a private ex-pat policy. I just need to know if this is acceptable or not.

Thanks

Topics merged by admin

Depends on your income. If you make under €3900 gross, you must belong to a state-sponsored or "gesetzlich" Krankenkasse such as AOK, Barmer etc, which takes a percentage of your income, matched by your employer. Only above that income level can you have private insurance such as the AXA you describe. Best thing is to consult a Versicherungsmakler, an independent broker who knows the ins and outs of all insurance matters and is not affiliated with any particular insurance company. There are many makler; I've been using the services of one for many years: CK Versicherungen, currently on the Französische Strasse in Mitte.