Health insurer DSW raising premium by €3.25 per month

DSW is increasing the premium of its basic health insurance by 3.25 euros next year, the health insurer was the first to announce. DSW customers will pay 127.75 euros per month.

Rising healthcare costs, caused by wage and price increases and the increasing use of expensive specialist medicine, would actually require an increase of 7.50 euros. DSW decided to implement less than half of that. According to the organization, this is possible because of the compensation for the coronavirus costs. The compensation does not consider the fact that less money could be spent on regular care due to scaling down.

The compensation happens through the statutory catastrophe scheme, intended for disasters that usually only cause congestion in a specific region and do not result in further scaling down of healthcare. The compensation now led to a positive balance, and DSW uses that to limit the premium increase to 3.25 euros.

Not all of the postponed healthcare needs to be made up, explained the chairman of the board of directors, Aad de Groot. Some care is no longer necessary in the long term, for example, repeat and reassurance consultations or keyhole surgery in connection with pain that has disappeared. But some care cannot be provided because of staff shortages, he said. De Groot called the limitation of the premium increase "justifiable." The money is available because insured persons could not rely on certain care, he said.

DSW leaves the healthcare deductible at 375 euros, about ten euros less than the legally established amount. "By applying a lower deductible, DSW wants to make it clear that the deductible is too high and misses its target. DSW is in favor of a fairer distribution of healthcare costs between chronically ill and healthy people, " the company said.

DSW traditionally announces the new premium a week after Budget Day, but this time it did so later because there was still uncertainty about the coronavirus costs of recent months. It was already known that the insurer hoped to limit the premium increase as much as possible through the compensation.