Germany has the world’s oldest national social health insurance system, with origins dating back to Otto von Bismarck’s social legislation, which included the Health Insurance Bill of 1883, Accident Insurance Bill of 1884 and Old Age and Disability Insurance Bill of 1889. Mandatory health insurance originally applied only to low-income workers and certain government employees, but has gradually expanded to cover the great majority of the population. The system is decentralized with private practice physicians providing ambulatory care and independent, mostly non-profit hospitals providing the majority of inpatient care.
Publicly Financed Health Insurance
With its universal multi-payer healthcare system Germany ensures free healthcare for all via health insurance funds.
Health insurance is mandatory for all citizens and permanent residents of Germany. It is provided by competing, not-for-profit, nongovernmental health insurance funds or “sickness funds” (there were 124 as of January 2015) in the Statutory Health Insurance system (SHI), or by substitutive Private Health Insurance (PHI). Coverage is universal for all legal residents. All employed citizens (and other groups such as pensioners) earning less than EUR54,900 per year (as of 2015) are mandatorily covered by Statutory Health Insurance, and their dependents (nonearning spouses and children) are covered free of charge.
Individuals whose gross wages exceed the threshold (over Eur54,900), as well as the previously SHI-insured self-employed, can remain in the publicly financed scheme on a voluntary basis (and 75% do) or purchase substitutive Private Health Insurance, which also covers civil servants. The sickness funds are mandated to provide a unique....READ MORE
Germany has the world’s oldest national social health insurance system, with origins dating back to Otto von Bismarck’s social legislation, which included the Health Insu...
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