The CDU wants to decouple them by introducing a flat-rate premium.
Half of this will come from a flat-rate premium, initially set at £10 per member.
But in its first year of operation it will receive just the flat-rate premium, worth £150m.
Conservatives in Mrs. Merkel's party originally pushed for a flat-rate premium, which would cut the link between income level and health care payments.
Instead of health-care contributions based on a worker's wage, Ms Merkel wants a flat-rate premium, with tax-financed subsidies for the poor.
In health care, for instance, Christian Democrats want to start decoupling contributions from wages by introducing a small flat-rate premium.
The leaders of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU's sister party in Bavaria, oppose the flat-rate premium, calling it unjust and a hard sell.
So even Germans rich enough to opt out of the statutory health system would help to pay for it.A flat-rate premium is "unsocial," thunders the left, which sees it as a first move in a liberal plot to strip the statutory health system to a bare-bones scheme and privatise the rest.
For the first time, all benefits can be claimed by people who have contributed nothing towards them.Beveridge's plan was for a national insurance system: anyone paying the same, flat-rate, premium would receive the same, flat-rate benefits if they became ill, unemployed or old.
