“An inefficient system of public healthcare, lack of support for additional insurance, growing health debt as well as inflation, waves of refugees and many other modern disasters are a recipe for a health crisis in society”, says Dorota M. Fal from the Polish Chamber of Insurance (PIU). On the basis of these problems, there is a growing interest in private health insurance. At the moment, every tenth Pole has one.
According to the latest data of the Polish Chamber of Insurance (PIU), we spent PLN 880 million,
i.e. 12% more than a year earlier, on private health insurance policies in the first nine months of 2022. During this time, the number of people covered by such insurance increased by 10.6% and amounted to 4.08 million. Why such increases? The Chamber representing the interests of insurers points out that, on the one hand, there is a growing need to supplement the public system with additional solutions supporting healthcare. On the other hand, private policies cover an increasingly wide range of services. So, in addition to basic outpatient healthcare, they also include access to comprehensive tests and prophylaxis.
“We spend more than PLN 30 billion annually on health services outside the public system, not counting drugs and parapharmaceuticals. This year, we will spend over PLN 1 billion on private health insurance. Expenditure on health insurance, compared to how much we generally spend privately on health, is small. Efforts should be made to shift this proportion”, adds Dorota M. Fal, Advisor to the Management Board of PIU, in an interview for the industry portal money.pl.
Expensive health
According to the data of the Statistics Poland (GUS), total expenditure on healthcare (including from the National Health Fund (NFZ), budget and private wallets) in 2022 amounted to PLN 172.9 billion and accounted for 6.6% of GDP. It is around PLN 21 billion more than a year earlier. Expenditure increases have been observed in both public and private spending. According to the NFZ forecasts, expenditure will continue to grow (last year, it amounted to PLN 122 billion). However, this will not translate into
a greater number of benefits or improvement in the health of Poles because medical inflation is also growing – it exceeded 20%. According to insurers, private insurance policies constitute the cure for health debt. Looking at the relatively small expenditure on the public healthcare system, it offers quite a lot. There is no doubt that this expenditure is clearly insufficient, given how much we spend on health outside the system and how large our health debt is. According to the PIU expert, expenditure from private pockets will always be needed and will continue to grow.
It is important that money is spent efficiently. Moreover, according to Dorota M. Fal, healthcare should stand on two legs: public and private. However, it is not the case.
“Since we have been unable to combine these two systems at the functional level for many years,
e.g. we cannot go to a public hospital and pay with private insurance, it may be necessary to combine them at the fiscal level, e.g. by introducing reliefs for employers who finance private insurance for their employees”, suggests Fal.
She further comments that this is the case in many countries, including Spain or Romania. According to her, such solutions will improve the health of employees in Poland. In addition, according to the PIU expert, private insurance offers prophylactic measures that are clearly insufficient in the public system.
Health crisis on the horizon
It is never so bad that it could not get worse. According to insurers, the healthcare system will not be cured by legislation allowing for the transfer of financing of some services from the state budget to the National Health Fund (NFZ). This includes e.g. highly specialised procedures, medical rescue or medicines for pregnant women and people aged 75+. The NFZ budget is also related to GDP, which will decrease to 0.7% in 2023 according to the forecasts of the National Bank of Poland.
“An inefficient system of public healthcare, lack of support for additional insurance, growing health debt as well as inflation, waves of refugees and many other modern disasters are a recipe for a health crisis in society”, says Dorota M. Fal. According to the expert, the situation is further complicated by the shortage of medical staff, their professional burnout and the post-pandemic PTSD, which is becoming more and more common in this professional group. “Public funds are not enough to heal the system. It is no coincidence that health insurance is becoming increasingly popular, even though, it has not yet been included in the healthcare system in Poland”, Fal continues.
The problem is that private healthcare also leaves much to be desired. For instance the availability of services as part of private medical packages is … fiction. The backstage of making appointments is alarming. Patients without a subscription have easier access to doctors and tests than those who have a package. And this is one of many problems of private medical care.
