Parity Health Insurance? – For Employers (Still) A Misfire

With the now almost annual increases in health insurance contributions, it is not only the insured who are rightfully annoyed, but, as few know, possibly soon also the employers. Within the ranks of the SPD there have long been increasing calls that health insurance contributions should no longer be borne solely by employees but should be paid on a parity basis by employers as well. For the insured this is fundamentally an improvement of the current situation, because next year they must alone bear an increase of up to 0.6 percentage points of their contribution, measured against their income. For employers, however, a parity contribution would mean a double burden that has so far been avoided.

 

The problem is not the splitting of employees’ health insurance contributions as such, but the fact that employers already have to bear high pecuniary burdens: during the first six weeks of continued payment of wages for sick employees they bear the contributions entirely themselves without any participation by the health insurers or by the sick employees (with the exception of companies covered by U1). From experience, not only many employers but also the detectives of Kurtz Detective Agency Frankfurt can attest that not all medical certificates of incapacity for work are lawfully obtained.

Continued Payment of Wages in Case of Illness: Costs of €51 Billion a Year for Employers

The statutory — to say nothing of the public — health insurers stubbornly refuse to come to employers’ aid by contributing to the costs arising from continued payment of wages earlier than after six weeks, even though, as Kurtz Investigations Frankfurt can confirm on the basis of many observations, a not insignificant share of these ongoing costs is likely paid to employees who are malingering. According to the dpa, these costs amount to €51 billion per year that employers must shoulder alone.

 

These €51 billion are paid to employees who, due to their sick note, do not provide any counter-performance (and therefore cannot). This results not only in losses for the affected employers but for the entire German economy and its capital to the tune of billions. Consequently Eric Schweitzer, President of the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK), told the Rheinische Post: “If politicians want to reintroduce parity financing and increase the employer contribution, we must also discuss parity financing of continued wage payments.” He further stated that this sum corresponds to a multiple of what employees have to pay in additional contributions to their health insurance.

Despite Being Signed Off Sick: Employees Take on Secondary Jobs

A not insignificant part of the €51 billion paid out for sick leave is unjustifiably claimed: while truly ill employees have a natural claim to continued pay, more and more cases arise that are, in fact, wage-continuation fraud by employees on sick leave. Employees go on what is thus a paid holiday during their sick leave or take up an undeclared secondary job in order to be paid twice.

 

To get to grips with this growing problem, it makes sense to engage the private and corporate detectives of Kurtz Detective Agency Frankfurt, who can detect wage-continuation fraud by means of various methods and substantiate it in a court-admissible manner. These methods employed by our Frankfurt private detectives include, on the one hand, location-independent social-media research — checking and cross-referencing sick-note data with posts, photos and comments that indicate fraudulent sick leave. On the other hand, the detectives of Kurtz Investigations Frankfurtoperate primarily on site, conducting surveillance of the suspect employee at their residence or at the suspected second job and documenting their activities photographically.

Brazen Confidence? Not If You Know How to Help Yourself.

No matter how much you trust your staff, there are always bad apples. Thus it can happen that a long-serving, diligent secretary is unmasked as a malingerer by a holiday photo posted on Facebook during her certified sick leave; likewise, after repeated sick notes and an initial suspicion, an employee who is persistently conspicuous in a negative sense may be observed by the private and corporate detectives of Kurtz Detective Agency Frankfurt and photographed attending the gym at supposedly restorative weekends, pumping iron and, to top it all off, participating in bodybuilding competitions during two or three periods of sick leave each year. The damage resulting from such fraudulent actions runs, as mentioned, into double-digit billions, which clearly shows how much more money could be invested in development, research or the expansion of the German economy if such offences could be curbed.

When May Detectives Investigate? The Initial Suspicion.

If an employee is signed off sick several times a month and appears surprisingly well-rested after the weekend, how should one react? Before commissioning a corporate investigation agency such as Kurtz Investigations Frankfurt, a justified initial suspicion must exist, because our detectives must be able to present a court-resistant ground for suspicion in order to document wage-continuation fraud for use in court. Of course employees have a protected private sphere, which is only insufficiently protected against surveillance if there is a concrete suspicion. If the employee always gives the same reason for their sick note or, at the other extreme, constantly different and very specific reasons (and these are perhaps always certified by the same GP who is a friend of the employee), our Frankfurt detectives may be engaged.

 

In the best case for the company and the employee the suspicion proves unfounded and the once-suspected staff member is cleared; in the economically perhaps most favourable — because detective costs are recoverable — but humanly disappointing case, actual wage-continuation fraud is uncovered, documented and passed on to the employer, which may lead to a warning or, in the more likely event of an obvious breach of trust and economic harm to the company, to dismissal of the employee. If you have questions or uncertainties about which grounds for suspicion are justified or about other issues related to commissioning the corporate investigators of Kurtz Detective Agency Frankfurt, our investigators are always available to assist you: +49 69 1201 8431.

Author: Maya Grünschloss, PhD

 

Kurtz Detective Agency Frankfurt

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