Sickness benefit: Important deadline is drastically shortened

Insured people now have to be quick

Sickness benefit: Important deadline is greatly shortened

Anyone who receives sick pay for a longer period of time is often required by their health insurance provider to undergo rehabilitation. Insured people now have significantly less time to submit the corresponding application, and there are serious consequences.

The law to stabilize contributions to statutory health insurance has been passed. While Restrictions on free family insurance and higher co-payments for medication received a lot of attention, a momentous change in sick pay went largely unnoticed.

This shortens it Federal Government the deadline for submitting an application for rehabilitation. Starting next year, this will only be four weeks instead of the current ten weeks. Recipients of sickness benefit therefore have significantly less time to submit the relevant application to their health insurance company.

Every day can be crucial. Anyone who misses the deadline loses their right to sick pay. In this case, the health insurance company is entitled to stop paying sick pay on the last day of the deadline. The right to sick pay is reinstated if the application is submitted later. However, retroactive payment of sick pay for the days of delay is not possible.

With recent spending totaling 21.6 billion euros, sick pay is now one of the largest expenditure items for health insurance companies. This is also why the federal government recently tightened the regulations for sick pay:

• Reduction in case of job loss: If the employment relationship ends while the insured person is on sick leave, the sick pay falls to 60 percent of the net salary from the day after the employment ends. If the insured person has children, the figure is 67 percent. The regulation applies from January 1, 2027. To date, sick pay has continued to be paid at the same level even after the end of the employment relationship.
• Loss of sick pay for partial pensions: Anyone who, as a working pensioner, receives a partial pension due to old age of more than two thirds of the full pension, will lose all entitlement to sick pay from January 2027.