Cash registers generate three billion Euros lousy. After a full surplus in the summer, the statutory insurers in Germany slide significantly into the red in the autumn. According to a media report, it looks worst at the AOK.
Massive corona tests and subsequent operations from the spring put pressure on the balance sheet of the statutory health insurance companies in Germany: In the third quarter of this year, local, replacement and company and guild funds as well as miners’ associations posted a loss of three billion euros. The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ) reports.
Cash Registers Generate Three Billion Euros Lousy
According to the preliminary figures, things went worst at the general local health insurance funds (AOK): minus 1.4 billion euros, followed by substitute funds with minus 1.2 billion euros. In the case of the guild health insurance funds, the expenditure exceeded the income by more than 200 million euros. In the case of the company health insurance funds, the underfunding was 150 million euros, in the Knappschaft it was 52 million euros.
Overall, according to the FAZ, the deficit in statutory health insurance was almost sixteen times as large as a year ago. At that time it was 193 million euros. In the first half of the year, the 100 statutory insurers had generated an increase of almost 1.3 billion euros: because expensive operations and other treatments had been postponed during the corona pandemic and because significantly fewer patients than usual went to the doctor, to the hospitals, to the Physiotherapists or had trusted in rehabilitation.
Martin Litsch, CEO of the AOK Federal Association, spoke of the financial development in the “FAZ” of Corona-related “severe fluctuations”. It is clear, however, “that we will end this year with a minus, and that the big end for statutory health insurance is yet to come.”
Only a few weeks ago the AOK Federal Association warned of a possible doubling of the additional contributions to the statutory health insurance if the federal government did not significantly increase the corona aid. The higher federal subsidy of five billion euros promised by Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) is nowhere near enough to cover the financial gap of more than 16 billion euros in statutory health insurance forecast for 2021, according to Litsch at the time.
Cash registers generate three billion Euros lousy for source: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/krankenkassen-erwirtschaften-drei-milliarden-euro-miese-a-9a9495bd-be4e-4f9f-b5d9-24296beef0bc
