Employer subsidy: This is how much it will increase for privately insured people in 2027

GKV reform

Higher subsidies for privately insured people

While the health insurance reform poses a lot of hardship for those with statutory health insurance, those with private insurance can benefit – but only in certain cases.

In the coming year, legally insured people with high incomes will have to pay more for their health insurance thanks to the GKV Contribution Rate Stabilization Act. The reason is that of the Federal Government decided on an extraordinary increase in the contribution assessment limit. It indicates the income up to which legally insured people have to pay health insurance contributions. This limit is currently 69,750 euros per year or 5,812.50 euros per month. According to the Statutory Health Insurance Contribution Rate Stabilization Act, this limit will be increased extraordinarily by 300 euros per month next year, in addition to the regular increase.

Employees currently pay 17.5 percent of their gross income to statutory health insurance, assuming the average additional contribution of 2.9 percent. The employer pays half of this contribution (8.75 percent). Given the existing contribution assessment limit, the employer pays its privately insured employees a maximum of 508.59 euros.

If the contribution assessment limit increases, the maximum employer contribution also increases, as the financial portal “Finanztip” has now calculated. Simply due to the extraordinary increase in the contribution assessment limit by 300 euros per month, the subsidy increases from 508.59 to 534.84 euros per month.

At the same time, however, the contribution assessment limit is also regularly increased at the turn of the year. In recent years this increase has also been around 300 euros per month. If this development continues, the maximum employer contribution would increase to 561.09 euros – that would be around 50 euros more than today. However, the contribution assessment limit for 2027 has not yet been determined.

However, in order to benefit from the high premium subsidy as a privately insured employee, the costs for private health insurance must be very high. In order to receive the full employer subsidy of 561.09 euros, the monthly contribution for private health insurance would have to be 1,122 euros in the coming year.

Important to know: The subsidy applies not only to the employee himself, but also to his wife and children, provided they are also privately insured. If your own private health insurance contribution is too low to exhaust the employer’s maximum subsidy, the difference can, under certain conditions, be used for the contributions of the children or spouse. However, the existing 50 percent limit also applies to them – this means that the employer never pays more than half of the insurance contributions.

However, switching to private health insurance should be carefully considered and not based solely on increasing subsidies. Mainly because it is hardly possible to switch back to statutory health insurance after the age of 55.