Statutory health insurance 

Roughly 90 percent of the population in Germany are statutorily insured and entitled to receive benefits to maintain and restore their health or to improve their state of health.

The statutory health insurance is funded by the statutory health insurance funds which, being public-law corporations, are financially and organisationally independent. They carry out the tasks assigned to them by the State on their own responsibility.

Fundamental structural principles of statutory health insurance include the solidarity principle, which guarantees identical benefits regardless of income, i.e. the amount of contributions paid, and morbidity risks, and the principle of benefits in kind, which ensures benefits without up-front payments on the part of the insured. These benefits are largely funded through contributions which are paid by employers and employees in equal parts.

As funding organisations of statutory health insurance, the statutory health insurance funds have the right to self-government. Self-government is exercised on an unsalaried basis by elected representatives of the insured and of the employers. The Substitute Funds, where only the insured are represented in self-government, are an exception.

Large sections of the health care system are shaped by self-government via contracts with the health care providers. One of the core tasks of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds is to create binding collective regulations on, for instance, medical and in-patient care.

Together with the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Dentists and the German Hospital Federation, the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds forms the Federal Joint Committee which decides on the benefits to be included in the statutory health insurance catalogue.