Abstracts by keywords: risk adjustment system
The statutory health insurance companies are responsible for statutory health insurance (GKV) in Germany. The GKV market is subject to an ongoing, albeit slowing, concentration process with a steadily declining number of providers in the market - the number of health insurance companies has fallen from 950 in 1995 to 110 currently (Federal Health Reporting 2018). The individual health insurance companies are in competition with each other, whereby the majority of their range of services is uniformly designed across all funds via the mandatory GKV service catalogue. The opportunities to stand out from other health insurance companies are very limited. On the service side, this is only possible in the area of the so-called statutory services, via selective contracts with service providers or via additional services. In addition, there is competition over the price in the form of the individual health insurance fund's additional contribution. However, functioning competition in health insurance systems only makes sense if either the conditions for a perfect market are met or balancing mechanisms are implemented that enable functioning competition (cf. also fundamentally Dahl, Lux and Matusiewicz 2012; Matusiewicz 2016).