Private health insurance adds nearly 1.5 million customers post-pandemic

Almost one and a half million people took out private health insurance in Spain between December 2019 (just before the pandemic) and December 2022, bringing the total number of insured to more than a quarter of the population, 25 32%, and reaching just over 12 million people.

The saturation that the public health system began to register in 2020, overwhelmed by a flood of coronavirus cases, caused many people to choose to get insurance because of Shorter queues From private centers, the possibility of choosing a doctor or having a private room.

According to the latest data from ICEA, the service for statistics and studies in the sector, corresponding to the end of 2022, health insurance grew by almost 14% in the number of users in the aforementioned period and 20.5% in bills, It reached 10,334 million euros at the end of last year. Of this amount issued by the 58 companies operating in the Spanish health branch, it represented 16% of the total 64,673 million that the Spanish insurance entered in the total last year.

Going back to health insurance, the increase recorded in these pandemic years also increased the market share by more than one percentage point. The size of the premiums of the five major insurance companies Spanish Health – SegurCaixa Adeslas, Sanitas, Asisa, DKV, Mapfre-, which closed 2022 with 73% of the pie.

The absolute leader of the Spanish private healthcare market is SegurCaixa Adeslaswhich includes the works of Mutua Madrileña, with a share of 30.04%It was followed by Sanitas with 15.49%. Asisa, at 13.25%; DKV by 7.40% and Mapfre by 6.77%. In terms of premium income from the Big Five, by 20.5% in those three years It totaled 7,689 million euros.

Different types of health policies

There are many types of health insurance policies on the market, such as those for the provision of services, which can be health care or medical insurance (which gives access to a range of services for a premium and is the most common) or reimbursement (the insured pays for services received and the company returns insurance is part of the amount).

There are also subsidy insurances, which compensate the insured in the event that he must take sick leave, hospitalization or any other health-related reason, explains the Spanish employer of the insurance, Unespa, on its website. within this branch, Health insurance growth of 7.36% In 2022, while those for reimbursement increased by 6.20% and those for support decreased by 2.40%.

Unespa advocates that the private complements the public

The health needs of the community are very broad and the available resources are limited, explain Unespa’s sources, who advocate for this Public and private health is not a competition, Instead, they complement each other and, in fact, private health care allows for significant cost savings for the public system.

Health insurance works because Prices are “competitive and accessible”, The available supply is wide and has differential characteristics, such as innovative treatments, complementary treatment options, and quick access to specialists or overseas coverage, depending on the sources. These characteristics have been the reason for the continuous growth that health insurance bills have maintained in the past three decades.

These insurances have more than doubled since 2006, before the last major economic and financial crisis, which exploded with the bankruptcy of the American entity Lehman Brothers and the mortgage crisis, as the volume of sales of the branch at the end of that year amounted to 4916 million euros, and in 2022 it exceeded 10,000 million.

The contribution of the private health system to the national health system was evident during the pandemic, as the sector provided COVID-19 patients with access to treatment and I paid for diagnostic tests For millions of people in Spain, which has contributed to containing the epidemic in the country, as the employers’ association explains.

“There are 12 million people paying for health insurance in Spain,” according to 2022 data, and therefore, “do not use public health services,” which represents Savings “obvious” in the cost of managementUnespa adds.