Die Entgeltfortzahlung im Krankheitsfall als gesetzliche Sozialleistung

In Germany, the law concerning the continued payment of wages in case of an employee illness has been changed several times and been the topic of intensive political discussions for some years now. At the same time, most European countries operate, like Germany, sick payment schemes as mandated benefits. However, the form of the mandated benefit varies significantly between European countries. In a first step, we ask for the potential sound economic reasons behind the use of mandated benefits in this area. Our conclusion ist that there are no such reasons for this regulation. In a second step, we analyse different forms and different levels of regulating sick payment schemes under allocative criteria. The result is that from an allocative point of view the introduction of a coinsurance is the right way, and that a coinsurance in the form of a deductible should be preferred to a proportional reduction in wage payments. Additionally, there are some arguments for implementing sick payment schemes on the enterprise or sector level instead of the national level.