Company health insurance: when your employer co-finances supplementary private cover

Company health insurance works as a group contract. The employer concludes a framework contract with a private insurer for its workforce. Employees are accepted collectively, without individual health questions. This lowers the administrative hurdle and also gives older employees or employees with pre-existing conditions access to extra benefits that would cost them more privately or that they would not get at all. For employees with pre-existing conditions in particular, the absence of health questions is a real advantage.

Typical benefit components are supplementary dental plans, glasses and visual aids, check-ups beyond the statutory standard program, alternative healing methods or inpatient optional hospital services such as chief physician treatment. The exact scope depends on the contract the employer has negotiated.

Company health insurance applies to employees as long as the employment lasts. When you leave the company, it usually ends. Some insurers allow individual continuation, meaning you can continue the plan at your own cost after changing jobs. This depends on the employer's contract terms.

Company health insurance has become established as a tool to retain and attract employees. Employers who compete for qualified skilled workers increasingly use it as part of the overall package. It can be structured in a tax-efficient way and gives employees a direct, tangible benefit.

For the employee, the advantage is that the premiums can be granted free of tax and social insurance contributions within certain limits for benefits in kind. This makes it more efficient as an extra benefit than a pay rise of the same amount. The tax details should be clarified with a tax advisor.

The most important difference from comprehensive health insurance funded by the employer is that company health insurance does not create a separate private health insurance relationship. Employees stay in their statutory or private health insurance, and company health insurance only adds to the scope of benefits. If you are privately insured or want to be, you still need your own comprehensive private health insurance. Comprehensive health insurance through the employer is a different arrangement that is treated differently under tax and insurance law.

When you change employers or negotiate your salary, actively check whether company health insurance is part of the pay package and what exactly it covers. This component is often overlooked, but it can have considerable value.