More and more people use private health insurance and prefer to pay for guaranteed access to health care. They don't trust the healthcare system and don't want to wait months for an appointment with the NHS. Interestingly, the number of private subscribers has increased, despite the fact that their rates have also increased during this time.
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The Polish Chamber of Insurance has provided us with the latest data for the third quarter of 2023 in terms of health insurance. It turns out that more and more Poles use them.
private by the end of the third quarter of 2023 health insurance had 4.69 million Poles. This means an increase of almost 15%. compared to the same period of the previous year.
During the 9 months of 2023, Poles spent almost PLN 1.2 billion on this policy. It was almost 34 percent. More from year to year. caused mainly by inflation price increase For private health insurance, new customers have not been deterred by the number of those who They don't just want to count visits to the NHSis constantly growing.
Where do the decisions about private health insurance come from?
PIU Explains the increase in collected premium. According to the Chamber, two main factors influenced this: the constant development of the insurance market, the so-called New saleso new customers And the inevitable increase in the prices of new products, but also policies, which is the result of inflation and increases in medical care, in the first place. Medical visits.
In the third quarter of 2023, premiums actually increased, reflecting inflation from previous periods – respectively Central Statistics Office for the last three years CPI indexWhich means the change in the value of consumer goods and services increased by 37.8%.
The high rates of private health insurance did not discourage existing or new customers, as evidenced by the growing number of contracts, with more contracts signed by both individual and group customers, mainly employers.
– Insurers are seeing an increase in awareness among consumers who value health insurance and use it for both the prevention and specialist visits – he says Dorota M. FallAdvisor to the Governing Board of the Polish Chamber of Insurance.
Good care, healthy employees
The chamber also asserts that access to good and prompt healthcare is crucial not only for patients, but also benefits the state and employers.
In Poland, according to ZUS, costs related to absenteeism amounted to PLN 25.5 billion in 2022. This was PLN 1 billion more than a year earlier. These are only the costs of ZUS, as the total economic loss related to this is estimated by the PIU at PLN 170 billion.
Therefore, reforming the healthcare system is an even bigger challenge for the new government. According to the PIU, the new government's approach to determining what, how much and when the public system will deliver to citizens and what their role is is important. private healthcareincluding insurance.
– We are all waiting for the first decisions of the new Minister of Health, especially since one of the points included in the coalition agreement is the improvement of access to ambulatory health care. This is especially important at a time when the system is struggling with a demographic crisis that also affects the labor market – summarizes Dorota M. Fall.
The problem is that the system requires not an ad hoc fix in the most urgent areas, but a thorough review and reform that may not be well received by patients and the medical community at first.
It cannot be “cured” in a few months and made more accessible to patients. These include: to evaluate services and adjust rates, restrictions on visits, staff shortages, duplication of tests and visits, patients who do not cancel visits for which they do not show up, excessive bureaucracy, unused competencies of various medical professions to decongest the system, the predictable role of private entities in the public system.
These are just some of the issues that have been postponed over the years by successive governments.