“Although private health insurance deductions are stipulated in the new healthcare bill and no cap has been set, they are useless unless stipulated in the Tax Code,” says Violeta Ciurel, president of insurance company AXA Asigurari.
Under the new bill, health insurance will be deductible, but only insurance that covers services additional or complementary to the basic package, and insurers that are also selling now insurance from the basic package will have to adjust their offers to the new law.
As opposed to the old bill, which stipulated the transfer of the EUR4 billion collected yearly by the National Health Insurance House from the 10.7% contribution from the gross wage paid by companies and employees to private health insurance houses in one move, the new bill targets to get private insurers involved and to gradually break the monopoly of the national health insurance house.
So, in a first stage, the development of private health insurance will be encouraged through deductibility and companies that will reach 15,000 policyholders will be able to also sell insurance for basic healthcare packages.
Starting 2015, the so-called mutual health insurance organizations will start operating and will be required to have at least one million contributors. According to the new bill, these non-profit mutual organizations will emerge as a result of the reorganization of county health insurance houses.
The law ought to be enforced starting January 1 2015.
“The law is quite ambiguous in its current form. The transfer of funds from a single budget to competing entities has been kept as a central element, but unfortunately insurers are called on to take on a risk that they don’t know how to quantify,” says businessman Florin Andronescu, who is involved in the management of private hospital Sanador, held entirely by wife Doris Andronescu.
Andronescu, in turn, says health insurance deductions are the key.
“I don’t understand why they haven’t done it (deductibility i.e.). It’s a simple matter and I’m sure it won’t have a major impact on the budget. It would be fabulous help for the industry, as well as for people who prefer to pay hospital costs to private providers out of their own pockets,” says Florin Andronescu. Currently subscriptions to private clinics don’t cover hospitalization services, but health insurance does, he went on.
Theodor Alexandrescu, manager of Alico Asigurari, says since the law is set to become effective only as of 2015, in a first stage the introduction of deductibility for private health insurance will help develop the market.
“The development by 2015 of voluntary and additional insurance will prepare the market for the transfer in 2015 of the single health insurance fund to private healthcare companies and to the new, non-profit mutual health insurance organizations,” he says.
Insurers are now called on to give their point of view on the draft law.
“The draft law is balanced, I don’t think it’s step back from the previous variant. But the question is how attractive this variant will be for life insurance companies as far as mandatory insurance is concerned,” says Violeta Ciurel, the manager of AXA Asigurari. She adds that there is no information yet as to the level of contributions to be collected, the degree of collection and the actual costs of the system, so the company cannot decide whether to enter this market or not.
The new health insurance system will basically be made up of private and state-run healthcare providers (medical practices, clinics, hospitals), insurers and mutual companies, and supervisors (the insurance supervisory commission and a new regulatory authority for mandatory health insurance).
(English version by Daniela Stoican)