Cancelling your health insurer
If you switch, you don’t do it yourself.

Switching

From your insurer to another public insurer

1. Choose the new insurer

You apply for membership with the new health insurer. You don’t have to declare anything else to switch.

2. The new insurer reports it

It notifies your insurer electronically. This notification replaces your cancellation.

3. Confirmation

Your insurer confirms the end of your membership within two weeks, to the new insurer, not to you.

4. Let them know

Tell whoever registers you: usually your employer, otherwise the employment agency (Agentur für Arbeit) or the job centre. Pensioners and students don’t need to report anything; the new insurer does that.

Deadline

The switch takes effect at the end of the month after next. If your membership application reaches the new insurer in November, you are with it from 1 February.

Minimum membership

If you chose your insurer yourself, you are tied in for twelve months. The tie does not apply after a contribution increase (see below) or when your membership ends by law, for example when you change jobs: you can then choose another insurer within two weeks of starting the new job, with no notice period. You can also apply to the new insurer before the twelve months are up; the switch then takes effect when the tie ends.

Cancelled yourself anyway?

According to guidance from the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds (GKV-Spitzenverband), your own cancellation letter to your insurer has no legal effect when you switch insurer. The notice period only starts running once the new insurer has received your application.

Cancelling yourself

When you have to cancel with your insurer yourself

Private health insurance – you are a voluntary member (freiwillig versichert), for example as an employee above the income threshold or as a self-employed person

You cancel yourself with your insurer. Membership ends at the end of the month after next, and the twelve-month minimum does not apply here. The cancellation only takes effect if, within that period, you prove that you have other full health insurance (a policy that replaces public insurance). A supplementary policy is not enough. The insurer must confirm your cancellation within two weeks. If you have an optional tariff, its tie of one or three years still applies. If the proof does not arrive in time, your membership simply continues and in the worst case you pay twice. So set the start of the private insurance for the day after the confirmed end date.

Salary above the threshold, becoming a civil servant, starting self-employment

When your compulsory insurance ends, cover continues automatically as voluntary membership, and your insurer writes to you. If you want to leave, you declare this within two weeks of that notice and prove other cover. If you miss the two weeks, only a normal cancellation to the end of the month after next remains. Until then you keep paying the voluntary contribution, even if your private insurance is already running. So send the declaration immediately; you can hand in the proof later. With salary, compulsory insurance does not end at once but only at the end of the year, and only if your salary is also above next year’s threshold. For 2027 that threshold is being raised by an additional €3,600. If you want to stay publicly insured, you don’t need to cancel. But do answer the insurer’s income questionnaire: without proof it charges the maximum contribution.

Family cover (Familienversicherung: cover through your spouse’s or parent’s public insurance)

If your job ends and you meet the requirements, compulsory membership ends by itself. Your spouse or parent, as the member, then registers you for family cover with their insurer. Do this promptly, otherwise your insurer first treats you as a voluntary member with your own contribution. If you are voluntarily insured, you cancel yourself. The twelve-month minimum then does not apply. By law membership ends at the end of the month after next; the insurer’s rules (Satzung) may allow an earlier date.

Moving abroad

This depends on the individual case: the country, and whether you keep working in Germany, are posted abroad or draw a pension. By law, voluntary membership does not end by itself when you move away. Without cancellation, contributions normally continue even though your entitlement to benefits is usually suspended abroad. Clarify this in writing with your insurer before you move: whether you have to cancel, which proof it needs, such as the deregistration certificate (Abmeldebescheinigung), and on which date membership ends. Insurers handle this differently.

Death

Membership ends on death; relatives do not have to cancel. They should inform the insurer, though. Anyone covered through the deceased’s family insurance receives benefits for one more month at most. After that, cover normally continues automatically as their own voluntary membership with their own contribution. Contact the insurer during that time.

Good to know

Optional tariffs and withdrawing

Optional tariffs

Bonus-payment and cost-reimbursement tariffs tie you in for at least one year, deductible and sickness benefit tariffs for three years. You normally cannot cancel before then. If the contribution rises you still can, except with the sickness benefit tariff. For special hardship cases the insurer’s rules must provide a special right to cancel the tariff. If your membership ends by law, for example when you change jobs, the tie to the tariff ends too.

Staying after all?

In the insurers’ practice, you can withdraw a declared switch as long as the notice period is running, so before the new membership begins. You tell your current insurer informally.

Ill or in treatment?

What applies when switching while ill →

Other insurers

Cancelling other health insurers