Health Insurance Premium Lower

Due to the huge increase in profits of health insurance companies, the premium for health insurance can be reduced for each payer by 15 euro monthly, according to the association for doctors and paramedics, VvAA. The Dutch Central Bank forecasts that the net profit of the nine Dutch health insurers will reach about 1.4 billion euro in 2012. Only CZ, with a market share of 20 percent, announced on Tuesday a profit of 518 million euro. When other insurers have obtained similar results, the profit of the sector might exceed 2 billion. Insurers benefit from lower prices of medicines and by buying care competitively. CZ says that they have 363 million profit on basic insurance and 41 million on supplementary insurance. Their investments earned them another 114 million and shareholders' equity grew to 2 billion. The insurers can afford to come up now with a premium reduction, according to Edwin Brugman, Director of Knowledge Management of VvAA. “The reserves of the insurers are now high enough to handle any setbacks.” In the House, almost all parties favor the use of the profits for premium reduction. Health Minister Edith Schippers says that she expects such a premium reduction, but will not force the insurers to do so. VvAA published last week a report on the financial position of insurers. In 2011, the profit of the sector was 669 million euro and the net profit, per insured, was 56 euro. That was the reason for the proposal to reduce premiums or keep the same.