Private health insurance premium increases for men

Hi TT-crowd!
All male clients of private German health insurances should receive these days or should alreday have received a letter from their health insurance that the premium will increase as of Jan 1st 2008. In many cases it is a hefty increase - some of which has already been discussed on other threads here.

Why does it happen: a high court decision ruled that insurances may not burden all the costs/risk for pregnancy/childbirth/maternity only on female insurance contracts and that these costs must be borne by all male clients as well. That is why all male healt insurance will go up and most female health insurances will go down.
Of course, them being insurances and always keen for more of your money, increase in male insurances will usually outweigh reduction in female insurances by a lot. Also I have noticed that a number of insurances are using this opportunity to bite out a larger share of the premium pie than they should if it was just for this reason, thus we see in many cases hidden increases in premium not based on the court decision alone...

What can you do? You have a special cancellation right if and when the premium is raised. Your window of opportunity lasts 4 weeks. You should use this time to have your insurance checked in correlation to others on the market in order to see if you still get your money's worth with it or if others are offering equal or better coverage for lower premium costs. Just go to any independent insurance broker/financial advisor and ask for a suc a check. Pls make sure that the coverage is compared in detail too, not only the premium because there can be many hidden areas of better or worse coverage in a contract.

You should not change/switch your insurance, however
- if you are happy with it and money is of no importance to you ;-)
- if you have had major ailments, surgery or development of medical conditions in recent years because the new insurance would either exclude these risks or ask for much higher insurance costs. basically you should never cancel an existing contract if you do not have a written confirmation from the new insurance about accepting your application.
- if the difference in premium to another insurance is only marginal at best because then it may not be worth the fuss and the now a little bit cheaper insurance might increase premium for other reasons next year anyway.

Anyway, for those who are/were not happy with their insurance or simply never took the time to have their insurance compared and rated: now is an excellen chance...

Cheerio

Thanks for the info Starshollow... I've received no such notification of an increase to my private insurance premiums In the event that I will in future, I'll do everything possible to avoid paying this broad-brush, non selective increase.

imo the costs/risk of pregnancy/childbirth/maternity should be borne by those - male and female - who are jointly responsible for the actual procreation of children - no-one else contributes to my expensive - essential - dental treatment!

I received notification last week. And it's an increase in the order of 10 %.
There was a cover letter, but of course that was just a lot of blah and didn't give a concrete reason.
Thanks for the clarification.

Yep, i got that one as well. It was mentioning some crap of males should share the cost of pregnancy and child birth.

I'm female and my insurance went up by 22€ a month to an (I think) exorbitant amount of 486€.
I think I will have to send Starshallow an email...

€486/month...fuck me! The cost of this universal healthcare in Germany is ridiculus

I had a letter last week, with an increase next year or maybe €8 per year. For that reason, i fit into the can't be arsed to change catagory.

P

Mine went down €30 and my husband's up by €20 so overall net gain of a whopping €10 per month.

as wen can see from the first reactions here: the results of the new risk computation are very different within the many insurances. those who find the increase unreasonably high should have them checked, those who are happy with premium developmment AND service of the insurance in the past should definetly stay.

Cheerio

Hi All,

My insurance went up by a whopping 40Euros a month. Will my company cover half the cost of the increase. Do i have to show them anything ??

Thanks in Advance

Malikos

You should receive a 'Bescheinigung für den Arbeitgeber' from your health insurer. You give this to your company's payroll so that they pay you the correct contribution. Most companies have an upper limit on the amount they will contribute.

He should have given his employer this anyway otherwise they wont contribute anything...


Set to half the local AOK charges.

True, but they're re-issued, and I've been off work since I got mine for 2008...


Thanks, always wondered what the limit was based on.

This is precisely why I stayed with a gesetzliche KK even though I could switch. The private insurers suck you dry. Of course, the day is coming when they will raise the upper limit on salary for premium calculations for gesetzlich as well, so we're all screwed.