One important caveat to the German system is that if you make over a certain amount and are healthy, the private system will actually be cheaper since it's not tied to income.
The caveat of this caveat is that if you're employed and you choose to go private and you stay private for 5 years, you won't be able to switch back to public.
Exceptions being if you're under 55 and earn less than the limit amount (something like 65k EUR roughly) or if you earn under 450 euro per month (the so-called mini job).
If you're older than 55, you're f'ed, good luck with your private insurance in old age, 'case you're not allowed to go public. They've taken this measure because people were using private insurance for long stretches and then switched to public as they were reaching retirement, straining a system they haven't contributed to
I'd say the average programmer makes $120k/yr USD after about 5 years in, which is roughly €100k EUR. What would a German citizen making 80k-100k EUR pay in healthcare monthly? I think my employer subsidizes about $200/mo into a medical program for just myself. Curious how it stacks up to Europe (which seems to do health care better than the US by leaps and bounds?)
The article linked in the comment chain you responded to gives numbers. For public insurance (which covers all essential care with no deductibles)
> The ninimum is 200€, [...] If you make more than 58050€ per year, you pay around 400€ per month. This is the maximum contribution (Höchstbeitrag). If your salary is higher than 58050€, you will not pay more.
For private insurance (possible if you earn above 64k or are a freelancer) its not linked to your income so rates vary.
> Private is cheap when you are young
If you are young and healthy, you could pay as little as 175€ per month (350€ for freelancers) for private insurance. If you make a lot of money, this is much cheaper than public insurance.
But there are deductibles and fees can go up if you have frequent health issues. Freelancers cannot be covered by the public system so it only works when you're an employee, otherwise you're on private insurance.
An employee would pay a little under 350 euros and their employer an equal share. It is calculated as 7.3% of your salary until your salary passes about 56k euros. Then it’s calculated as 7.3% of 56k regardless of much you earn. Not working spouses are automatically co-insured without any extra cost
It's not really 7.3%, since you need to account for the Zusatzbeitrag, and the Pflegeversicherung. In total, it's half of (14.6 + ~1.2 + 3.3)%, so around 9.5% assuming you don't hit the price limit.
The article linked above gives better, more recent figures on those limits.
Yes, the Pflegeversicherung is a separate thing, but it's charged by the health insurer, it's mandatory, and private insurers include it into the price. It's much simpler to bundle those things together.
Yes. Just to illustrate that, a high-earning self-employed developer would pay the maximum ~895€ amount, while they'd pay roughly half on the private system.
