Conditions for Development of the Private Health Insurance in Poland

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the chosen conditions, encouraging and hindering the development of the private health insurance in Poland. Individual kinds of private health insurance were identified based on the actual market offer. The main part of the work constitutes description and analysis of the main and characteristic for Poland conditions, influencing the private health insurance. Moreover, the work includes partial comparative analysis of Polish and chosen European healthcare systems. These systems vary in different forms of financing of health services or the amount of expenses on the healthcare system. Therefore, private health insurances function in many countries on different principles, what influences significantly their role in the healthcare system. In Poland, private health insurances exist as supplementary insurances related to the basic system. It is allowed, to a certain extent, competition with the public system. Relatively better quality of health services available through private insurances is one of factors for the dynamic growth of the value of this market in Poland in the last years. Keywords: private health insurance, group health insurance, individual health insurance, healthcare system, health Public healthcare system in Poland deals with some financial difficulties. Social and economic factors as well as principles of financing access to the medical services, based mostly on compulsory premiums, influence this fact. In Poland, there is currently functioning a system of compulsory health insurance, which is a basic (main) system. In this system managing, financial, supervisory, and controlling functions are divided between the public institutions: Ministry of Health, National Health Fund (NFZ), and territorial governments. NFZ is financing the healthcare services and contracts public and non-public service providers. Ministry of Health supervises the activities of NFZ (i.e., minister in charge for the health issues) and Ministry of Finance supervises the financial economy of the fund 1. General structure of the public healthcare system in Poland is presented in Figure 1. Private health insurance functioning in Poland is voluntary and has a supplementary character, in other words, increasing the scope of provided services, however, without the possibility to resign from the participation in the public system (Handschke, 2013). It is not possible to get a tax allowance for the private purchase of the health insurance. In spite of it, in the last years, the market of private health insurance is developing in Poland very dynamically and the average growth pace amounts to 30% in a year (Surmacz, 2012). Operational conditions and the scope of insurance are determined by the insurance companies. At the moment,