Hospital daily allowance in private health insurance: an extra benefit for inpatient stays

The principle is simple on purpose. For every day of medically necessary inpatient treatment, the insurer pays the agreed rate, from the day of admission to the day of discharge. There are no receipts, no billing with the hospital and no offsetting against other benefits. You can insure the component either as part of a full-cover plan or as separate supplementary insurance, which people with statutory health insurance can also take out.

You choose the amount when you take out the policy. Usual amounts are €20 to €100 per day. Because the premium rises with the daily rate, it is worth asking honestly which incidental costs a stay realistically creates. All amounts are guide values. What counts is the plan.

The flat amount covers the many small costs of a hospital stay.

For the self-employed, the flat amount has a second function. It cushions small business costs that continue during the stay, but it explicitly does not replace income. That is the job of Krankentagegeld, with completely different amounts.

In our plan practice, we see two extremes. On one side are policyholders without any daily allowance component, who are annoyed by every extra bill in a hospital case. On the other are policyholders with high daily rates, who pay unnecessary premium for it year after year. For most people, the sensible middle way is €30 to €50 per day.

We recommend that you plan the hospital daily allowance together with the optional hospital services. If you do without a single room and a chosen physician, a higher daily rate serves as deliberate compensation. We also recommend that you look for the replacement benefit clause in a plan comparison. It pays the daily allowance if the insured optional service is not used.

No, it requires inpatient admission. Outpatient procedures after which you go home create no entitlement, even if the procedure took place in a hospital.

Usually not. The hospital daily allowance is tied to hospital treatment. For health resort stays and rehabilitation, some insurers offer a separate health resort daily allowance as its own component. The clauses in the plan draw the line.

Yes. There it has its own purpose. It cushions the costs if a parent is admitted as an accompanying person or has to take time off work. Plans for children partly have their own rules for this, for example a higher daily allowance in the first years of life.

An increase counts as additional benefits and usually triggers new health questions. If you want the component, it is better to choose a realistic amount right when you join.