The basic idea of the social election: Whoever pays pension and health insurance contributions should be able to have a say in what happens to these funds and what they are used for. This does not happen directly, but via the elected representative of the insured. The social security – this includes the statutory health and nursing care insurance, the statutory accident insurance and the statutory pension insurance – manage themselves, so by definition they should financially and organizationally largely independent of the state be.
First of all: insured the Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund and Techniker, Barmer, DAK-Gesundheit, KKH Kaufmännische Krankenkasse and hkk Handelskrankenkasse can vote in the social election. You need to completed the 16th year of life have. According to the Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, trainees are allowed to vote for health insurance, but students with family insurance are not. In total, more than 50 million people are entitled to vote.
Those entitled to vote vote for their representatives for the so-called self-governing bodies, the highest decision-making bodies in social security. To put it simply: yours Insured parliaments. In the case of statutory health and long-term care insurance, this is the board of directors, in the case of pension and long-term care insurance, it is the assembly of representatives. Half of these bodies are made up of representatives of the insured and half of the employers. In the case of the substitute funds, there are even more policyholder representatives.
In the parliaments of the insured, the representatives decide about the Insurance budgets. But also about the course of insurance, Bonus program or for example the quality of rehabilitation offers, check-ups or vaccinations. The meeting of representatives of the pension insurance also elects several thousand voluntary insurance advisors who help, for example, pension applications to fill out. The administrative boards of the substitute health insurance companies have an influence on the election of the board members, which preventive measures are offered by the health insurance companies and define new services for insured persons, as the Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund explains.
In social elections there are no parties to choose from – unlike in political elections. Voted for Listenthat have been set up in advance. The seats in the self-governing bodies are distributed according to the proportion of votes cast for the entire list. Can be set up next to single candidates also members of unionsother associations of workers and representatives of employers. You can find out who is on which list on the websites of the trade unions and the health insurance companies.
Those entitled to vote have already received one or more letters. They each have one vote and cast it secretly. With this social choice, insured persons of statutory health insurance can also vote online for the first time. You can vote until May 31, 2023.
Nothing – participation in social elections is voluntary, just like in political elections in Germany. However, the composition of the parliament of insured persons will then be decided without your vote. In the last social election, the turnout was only 30 percent – apparently also because many people do not know what the election is good for. Since the costs for the current election amount to around 60 million euros in the end, there is also criticism of the procedure, which apparently does not “take” many people with it.
One point of criticism is the process, which seems opaque to many people and leads to low participation. But there is also criticism that the options for co-determination of the insured are relatively small in the end. In the meantime, the legislature has taken the helm in many areas. It is estimated that more than 90 percent of all social insurance regulations are prescribed by law. Since a self-governing body has only limited scope. In addition, insured persons of many health insurance companies cannot take part in the social elections at all: a number of health insurance companies or regional pension funds have already held so-called peace elections, in which there was only one list, or just as many candidates as there were places available. The criticism is that it is not transparent who ends up on the “election” list – and is automatically “elected” in the end. In many cases it is possible to set up a free list yourself – but it often takes a few hundred to a thousand signatures before you are admitted.