Is private health insurance possible for me? confused.

I would think your German wife should be able to Google a lot of this, or call the insurance companies, and give you better advice. So you seem to have 2 sources of money coming in, one is retirement and the other for a disability.  Versorgungszüge (you had it misspelled) just means disability benefits as you seemed to have figures out. Why one source of income is seen differently than another might have many reasons but does it matter? Usually one would have to pay the 14.6% on all income. If one is getting the income from an employer then they often have to pay half. Thus you are lucky that the SSDI is also at this rate; I assume due to the totalization agreement for retirement between the US and Germany for such benefits. Effectively, the US is subsidizing half of the cost of your health care based on the SSDI benefits.

With insurance you have to contact the providers. 90% of the people in Germany have public insurance. One has to meet certain requirements to get private insurance and it has NOTHING to do with being self-employed or not. And being retired is not working. You are not employed – you are retired. Most everyone in Germany has some form of retirement income and/or benefits while there might be taxes this is not saying one is working, self-employed or otherwise.  Most people with private insurance are actually civil servants. I am self-employed and have a public provider. There are rare cases where it is determined that one is not allowed to have public insurance and then is be default having to take private. But usually it is the other way around, that one is not allowed to have private coverage unless meeting many requirements and gets public. And if you are retired then private insurance will be expensive as it goes up with age. Most likely it will be more expensive than public options. And the other thing is that once one has either public or private insurance they are not usually allowed to switch even if they would otherwise meet the requirements.   

But if you are now under a public option as your post suggests and your wife doesn't work then she should be covered for free anyway. If she does work and has a public option then you should probably come under her coverage for free. And I am not qualified to say how it is in the States but would wonder about “free coverage” there. Really, with all of the conservative attacks on the health system? My father was a doctor who worked part of his career at a VA hospital. From my understanding vets with no other options end up there. But the VA system is horribly underfunded and understaffed. And googling the va.gov website I see mention of Tricare and CHAMPVA programs which sound as at least as complex as the German system as to who qualifies and what is really covered.  Many people in the States ARE insured and still go broke due to medical costs because lots of things are unexpectedly not covered or there is a limit that the insurers pay for certain things. I'm not saying you might not get good coverage in the States but one should be very certain of what they are getting into and what facilities and services are actually available where they plan to live. And while health coverage is an important factor, the cost of it in Germany should hardly be a deciding factor. And using the numbers you give, if you are really paying € 640 a month for the health care then you must be getting a minimum of 4,835 Euros a month (possibly much more if your retirement is the larger than your disability benefit)  so I don't understand how you cannot afford it?  This is a good income in Germany and everyone else manages with such an amount. Or maybe it is just an obsession of paying for something you assume is free elsewhere?

TominStuttgart wrote:

I would think your German wife should be able to Google a lot of this, or call the insurance companies, and give you better advice. So you seem to have 2 sources of money coming in, one is retirement and the other for a disability.  Versorgungszüge (you had it misspelled) just means disability benefits as you seemed to have figures out. Why one source of income is seen differently than another might have many reasons but does it matter? Usually one would have to pay the 14.6% on all income. If one is getting the income from an employer then they often have to pay half. Thus you are lucky that the SSDI is also at this rate; I assume due to the totalization agreement for retirement between the US and Germany for such benefits. Effectively, the US is subsidizing half of the cost of your health care based on the SSDI benefits.

With insurance you have to contact the providers. 90% of the people in Germany have public insurance. One has to meet certain requirements to get private insurance and it has NOTHING to do with being self-employed or not. And being retired is not working. You are not employed – you are retired. Most everyone in Germany has some form of retirement income and/or benefits while there might be taxes this is not saying one is working, self-employed or otherwise.  Most people with private insurance are actually civil servants. I am self-employed and have a public provider. There are rare cases where it is determined that one is not allowed to have public insurance and then is be default having to take private. But usually it is the other way around, that one is not allowed to have private coverage unless meeting many requirements and gets public. And if you are retired then private insurance will be expensive as it goes up with age. Most likely it will be more expensive than public options. And the other thing is that once one has either public or private insurance they are not usually allowed to switch even if they would otherwise meet the requirements.   

But if you are now under a public option as your post suggests and your wife doesn't work then she should be covered for free anyway. If she does work and has a public option then you should probably come under her coverage for free. And I am not qualified to say how it is in the States but would wonder about “free coverage” there. Really, with all of the conservative attacks on the health system? My father was a doctor who worked part of his career at a VA hospital. From my understanding vets with no other options end up there. But the VA system is horribly underfunded and understaffed. And googling the va.gov website I see mention of Tricare and CHAMPVA programs which sound as at least as complex as the German system as to who qualifies and what is really covered.  Many people in the States ARE insured and still go broke due to medical costs because lots of things are unexpectedly not covered or there is a limit that the insurers pay for certain things. I'm not saying you might not get good coverage in the States but one should be very certain of what they are getting into and what facilities and services are actually available where they plan to live. And while health coverage is an important factor, the cost of it in Germany should hardly be a deciding factor. And using the numbers you give, if you are really paying € 640 a month for the health care then you must be getting a minimum of 4,835 Euros a month (possibly much more if your retirement is the larger than your disability benefit)  so I don't understand how you cannot afford it?  This is a good income in Germany and everyone else manages with such an amount. Or maybe it is just an obsession of paying for something you assume is free elsewhere?

Hi Tom and thanks for your message. Also, thanks for the information. My wife is a teacher also in the public healthcare system (we both have Techniker). How would it ever be possible for me to be on my wife's insurance for free? As I understand, if I have an income, then I have to have my own insurance.  I am not looking for a way around the system or free healthcare here in Germany. To be honest, I just had sticker shock when my income doubled but my Krankenkasse payment went up by 60%.  I also didn't understand why my Va disability compensation is considered  Versorgungszüge and not my SSDI. The FInanzamt taxes my SSDI and my VA is tax exempt.  As far as private insurance goes, Is the ability to be in the private insurance based only on income? Also, I am not trying to live in Germany for the rest of my life so trying to step out of private insurance and into public again is not really a concern for me. 

As to the free insurance in the US, I should have further explained.  My insurance is completely free and VA hospitals have greatly improved in the last five years but you are right, it is still not the best care. It's not like I am that impressed with the German healthcare system either. I had a herniated disc in my back 3 years ago. I first had to make an appointment with my family Dr, which I had to wait 10 days for. Then she wanted to run a bunch of tests to see if my Tinnitus was related to my inner ear and not my back. I had to wait 2 weeks for that appointment. Then I finally got a referral to an orthopedist. I had to wait 7 weeks for that appointment. After that appointment I had to wait another 7 weeks until I could get an MRI. Then I had to wait 3 more weeks to see my orthopedist again to have it confirmed that I in fact had a herniated disc.  So, while VA healthcare might not be the greatest, it can't be worse than that. CHAMPVA is not free but quite inexpensive and because I am 100% disabled, my wife automatically is eligible.  The system is is relatively easy and uncomplicated. We pay 25% of all costs until we have paid up to $3000 in a year. After that, all costs are covered by the insurance.

Also, this:  And using the numbers you give, if you are really paying € 640 a month for the health care then you must be getting a minimum of 4,835 Euros a month (possibly much more if your retirement is the larger than your disability benefit)  so I don't understand how you cannot afford it?  This is a good income in Germany and everyone else manages with such an amount.
really made me laugh.  It's not a case of I can not afford it.  It's about considering we will be better off (financially) staying here in Germany or moving to the US. In the state I am from, there is no sales tax, I would pay no property tax, Benzin is 1/3 of the cost.  Buying a home is much less expensive. All of these would factor into our decision making process. The reason what you wrote made me laugh, is because I haven't met a German yet who doesn't think about how to save money and if possible they do. I don't know anybody here who simply thinks, "I can afford it.  Let me just leave it the way it is. If there is a way to save money, they will."

Again, thank you for the information. We found a lawyer who specializes in this and we will meet with him after summer. I don't necessarily need to pay less, I just want a full explanation of why.

Free family insurance coverage for spouses will of course be based on income. It can be that your retirement and disability benefits means you are not eligible. But your situation is a bit like the cliché of looking at a glass being half full or half empty. It's not that you are being overcharged for the disability income; you are getting subsidized on your SSDI, as if it were coming from an employer. And this is due to what is called a totalization agreement about such benefits between the US and Germany. Why do you “not know why” when I already explained it? The way the Finanzamt regards various income sources for tax purposes is an independent thing. But the Finanzamt is neither the deutsche Sozialversicherung nor the Krankenkasse.

One should also not confuse waiting times with the way a health system is financed.  My house doctor, like most that I know of need no appointment, one just goes in and waits. On any given day it might be 10 minutes or well over an hour. Special tests or appointments with specialists always take longer. But this is the same the world over as there is usually too much work for the number of specialists available in many locations. Priority for getting such appointments in Germany tends to be on need rather than who your insurer is. Serious or acute cases can often get seen rather quickly while none life threatening ones take time. One is kidding themselves if they think it is significantly better in the States.

Maybe one should also ask why other benefits get paid for US vets overseas but not for healthcare? The government would be saving money by not having to provide health services to its overseas vets so why not give them some kind of similar coverage or an extra stipend for this?

And everyone has to decide for themselves what their priorities are. You claimed you cannot afford German insurance but contradict yourself by saying that is not the issue after it being pointed out that you must have a pretty good income to have to pay that much. There are of course a lot of factors other than being able to live somewhere cheaper. One hears a lot of conservatives whine about how Europeans are taxed to death compared to Americans although it is not really true. One needs to look at total costs for services provided. City and state sales taxes vary in the States but are not existent in Germany although there is the VAT.

But public services are usually much better in Germany than the US. Of course it is most evident for someone with kids in university, which is free in Germany but when one really calculates what one pays for things in Germany compared to the US it is not necessarily so clear. Factors like where one lives, what they do etc. might mean an anomaly that one country is significantly cheaper overall than the other. But take your claim that fuel is 1/3 less in the States. I think it is actually even cheaper. But we tend to have better mileage cars and not have to drive so far in Europe. And then there is public transportation which is virtually non-existent in much of the States. I actually got rid of my car a couple of years ago and when I don't walk, ride my bike or have the optimal public transportation available I get a Stadtmobil car share from right next door to my apartment.  I save a lot of money and stress. Most working Americans don't even have the choice, they cannot get along without a car.

For long distances I really like trains, which are rare in America. Not only does Germany have a good rail system but one over 60 years old gets, for example a Bahncard50 for just 127 Euros and their spouse the same, even if not 60 yet. And the US is pretty good about handicapped access but I'm not so sure about discounts. Much public transportation and say entrance to public pools is free for a handicapped and often their helper.

Have you signed up for Tricare Overseas? That's what we use.

Maje

Thanks Maje but I am not eligible.  Tricare is just for retired military. I am not retired, just 100% disabled.

I understand.

Maje