[Possibilities for the involvement of social health insurance in occupational disease prevention].

The German compulsory sickness insurance bodies are now required to extend their preventive health measure contributions to such measures in commercial enterprises and industrial establishments. This raises two general problems as far as the sickness insurance bodies are concerned. On the one hand it must be determined how far these bodies are accepted by the companies as partners in mutual cooperation. On the other hand, it must be clarified to what extent the insurance bodies can develop programmes and measures for the target groups of company employees in accordance with the prerequisites and structures of these insurance bodies. Major differences exist between the individual types of German sickness insurance bodies, such as company-run insurance bodies, compulsory Government-run sickness insurance bodies and corporate sickness insurance sponsored and run individually by the different German guilds of artisans, craftsmen and other professions. Several examples are cited to illustrate this variety of German sickness insurance bodies.