MADRID (Reuters) – When six-year-old Ainara Fuertes was in ache with an ear an infection late final yr, her dad and mom needed to take her to an emergency room at their native public hospital within the Madrid suburb of Valdeolmos-Alalpardo.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the hospital was solely seeing non-COVID sufferers two days every week, so that they needed to make do with a distant session.
Ainara has since recovered, however her dad and mom Diana and Javier determined, like lots of of 1000’s of individuals throughout western Europe, to enroll in non-public medical insurance to enhance state protection.
“The hospital we rely on is overwhelmed with COVID sufferers and we need to have extra choices,” mentioned Diana, 40.
In Spain alone, nearly 470,000 folks signed as much as well being insurance policies final yr, a 47% enhance from 2019.
In neighbouring Portugal, Pedro Leitao, 44, has taken out non-public medical insurance for his 84-year-old mom, who suffered inside bleeding final November and was taken to a crammed non-COVID emergency room at a public hospital in Lisbon.
“Public hospitals are overcrowded … and the danger of an infection within the emergency room is gigantic,” he mentioned. “I’d be irresponsible if I didn’t purchase medical insurance for my mom.”
Frank Calderon, head of the well being division at Spain’s largest insurer Mapfre, whose coverage the Fuertes household picked, mentioned most new shoppers had been households with young children.
“Persons are on the lookout for flexibility and selection,” he mentioned.
In France, the place industry-wide knowledge for 2020 should not obtainable but, the insurer AXA mentioned final week that its income from medical insurance rose 6%, whereas total gross sales fell 4%.
And in Germany, the variety of non-public medical insurance insurance policies rose 1.8% to 36 million final yr, serving to to spice up premium revenue by 3.8% to 42.6 billion euros.
PANDEMIC PAIN
Actually, medical insurance has been one of many few silver linings from the pandemic for Europe’s insurers.
Total premium revenue has slumped together with prospects’ earnings, whereas claims associated to the pandemic, in addition to an enormous crop of pure disasters, have soared into the lots of of billions of euros, with extra to return.
In Portugal, complete premium revenue fell 18.7% to 9.9 billion euros in 2020, with life insurance coverage premiums down 50% – however medical insurance revenue rose 8.3% to a file 949 million euros, in response to the ASF insurance coverage supervisory authority.
In Spain, medical insurance premiums rose 5.1% at the same time as total premiums fell 8.3%, dragged down by the life, automotive and company sectors, the {industry} group UNESPA mentioned.
“Personal hospitals complement the wants of a part of the inhabitants, particularly in instances of disaster when demand is placing nice strain on public hospitals,” mentioned Pedro Carvalho, chief government officer at Tranquilidade, Portugal’s second-largest insurer by premiums and a unit of Italy’s Generali. Even because the pandemic recedes due to vaccination, insurers see extra well being enterprise coming their means, not least as a result of public hospitals may have an enormous backlog of therapies and operations that had been postponed due to the pandemic.
“There’s nothing to counsel that the present progress state of affairs gained’t proceed, not less than within the coming years,” ASF mentioned.
Reporting by Inti Landauro and by Sergio Goncalves in Lisbon and Tom Sims in Frankfurt; enhancing by Andrei Khalip and Kevin Liffey
