Health Insurance

In principle, all workers are compulsorily insured under statutory health insurance if their gross pay does not exceed a defined upper limit. Insured persons are free to choose the health insurance fund they wish to be insured with.

• workers, including those undertaking vocational training,
• recipients of unemployment benefit or unemployment assistance,
• farmers and their family members,
• artists and those in the publishing professions, in accordance with the Artists Social Welfare Act,
• persons in youth assistance facilities,
• recipients of occupational re-integration assistance,
• disabled persons employed at sheltered workshops and at institutions, homes or similar establishments,
• university students,
• trainees, apprentices without remuneration and apprentices in second-chance education,
• old-age pensioners/pension applicants who have been insured for a specified length of time,
• persons, who don't have any other health insurance and who, on the basis of their status, are entitled to statutory health insurance or who were in the past insured by the statutory health system. 

In addition, many people carry voluntary health insurance (for example, the self-employed) or are insured as family members. The option to obtain voluntary insurance is in principle open only to those who were previously compulsorily insured or insured as a family member. Provided certain conditions are met, spouses or partners of the insured, as well as children, are covered as family members, with no need to pay contributions.