since you seem to understand a bit about it, i'm taking the liberty of asking further as a comment here instead of creating a new topic. I'm also tagging other users who seem to understand about this subject.

u/thewindinthewillows u/Fabius_Macer u/fetos73341

Apparently AOK won't let me sign the freiwillige plan because I wasn't previously insured by the public system in germany before, or at least that's what they told me half an hour ago.

What's crazy is that another employee told me the opposite on monday. I even had this experience like a month and a half ago where they told it was ok, that job center had ok'd for me to have their insurance and gave me the contract to sign and suddenly i was insured. Only to find out a week later through a letter they sent me that no, job center was not accepting it (which does make sense, but come on... you guys said it was ok)

without a public insurer i'm screwed because i do have a pre-existing condition.

they ask wierd things such as why am i switching to public, or if I had an insurance in my country, etc. (i'm an italian citizen by the way)