Best Private Health Insurance Germany
One of the most important decisions you need to make is if you are signing up for a private German health insurance or go for the public health insurance.
There are so many things to consider before signing up that we put together this complete overview about German health insurances.
How much will I have to pay for a private German health insurance?
Contrary to the public health insurance, which is calculated by how much money you earn monthly, the private health insurance costs will be determined by several factors.
But in general the rule of thumb is that the younger and healthier (no bad past medical record) you are the cheaper it will be, regardless of how much money you earn.
Furthermore the monthly cost also heavily depend on how much extras you are choosing, such as treatment in hospital by the head of staff, Krankengeld, etc.
Private health insurances can start as low as 150€ a month for just basic coverage while with all extras and maybe a bit of a medical record you might have to pay up to 600€ a month.
Who can sign up for a Private Health Insurance?
There are some criteria you will need to meet to be able to choose a German private health insurance.
- Freelancer, civil servants and students can always choose private insurance
- Employees with a yearly income of at least 62.550€
Am I stuck forever with my choice of a private insurance?
No, you are not.
If you ever e.g. earn less than the XXX€ per month as an employee you will automatically will switch back to the public insurance.
Are children included in the private health insurance?
Unfortunately children are not included free of cost in the private health insurance.
So if you have several kids you need to calculate some additional 100-150€ a month for each of your kids.
Be careful if you are privately insured and your partner is not then by law you will have to insure your children privately, no matter if you are married or not.
What are the advantages of being privately insured in Germany?
You might ask yourself why you should go for a private health insurance instead of a public one. If so, here is why:
Quick appointments and free choice of doctors
Have you ever heard stories of your friends that needed to see a specialist doctor in Germany and first had to go to their Hausarzt (GP) who then could or could not refer them to the specialist?
And once they got the referal they had to wait for 3 months until the next appointment available?
Well these friends were most definitely not privately insured.
As soon as you have a German private health insurance you can choose any doctor you want and you will usually get an appointment within one week or less.
Private practices
There are some doctors that have a “Privatpraxis”, which means they only take you on as a patient.
These doctors usually have newer practices, less other patients waiting and more relaxed staff.
So if you have private insurance you should definitely make use of this advantage.
Save money if you have a high income
As already mentioned the public German health insurance works a bit different from the private one.
The more money you earn the more you have to pay (and still get the same service as anyone else).
With a private insurance your monthly fee will be calculated by how healthy you are, how much extras you included and how long you already paid into the insurance.
We have seen cases where you would save up to 200€ a month with a private insurance and at the same time get better medical treatment.
Get money back if you are healthy
Most of the private insurances offer you money back if you have not sent in any medical bills for that year.
So being healthy or not running to a doctor because you have the sniffles will be financially rewarded.
Which one is the best German Private Health Insurance?
This is a really tough one as we really do know a lot about German insurances, but saying with absolute confidence and for many different people with different needs it will be impossible to say which one is the best.
However without any doubts we can highly recommend Ottonova as your private health insurer.
First of all Ottonova is one of the few insurance companies that started out as a pure online player, which makes the whole signup process so much more efficient and easy to understand.
Furthermore we have heard a lot of good stories from friends that recently joined them.
Personally we are with our health insurer for so long it would not make sense to switch again.
But if we would be looking for a new one we would definitely go for Ottonova.
In any case before making such a huge decision continue reading about insurances in general in Germany.
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