More parents taking private health insurance for children
Increasing numbers of parents are taking out private health insurance policies for their children. According to the Finnish Innovation Fund SITRA, 60 per cent of Finns under the age of 20 have a private insurance of some kind.
Insurance companies say that the number of insurance policies for adults is also growing. The If... insurance company says that private health insurance has grown by an average of seven per cent a year.
Two large insurance companies have a total of a quarter of a million health insurance customers. Pohjola has 124,000 and If... has 123,000.
Pohjola Insurance reports that more than 68,000 of its policies are for children and nearly 56,000 are for adults.
Yrjö Mattila, head of development at the Social Insurance Institution KELA, says that public health care is declining in its purest form.
Last year KELA paid compensation for more than 95,000 visits to private doctors by children under the age of 4. The number of visits for children under 14 was 220,000.
Mattila says that many people resort to private medical services because of a common perception that public clinics offer slow and inferior service. However, he notes that there has been little research into differences in quality between public and private health care services.
Mattila says that health care is paid for three times over: a public health insurance premium is deducted from wage earners’ pay, public health care is paid out of taxpayers’ money, and many pay for private health services to treat their ailments.
He points out that private health insurance policies are relatively inexpensive in Finland.
“However, if more people take out private health insurance, prices could increase.”
Price comparisons are difficult to make. Annual premiums are usually a few hundred euros.
Mattila sees Sweden’s treatment guarantee system to be better than the one in Finland.
In Sweden a patient who does not get the treatment that he or she needs within a certain period of time, will be allowed to go to a private clinic, with public health care paying the cost.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 2.3.2011 - TODAY |
 More parents taking private health insurance for children |
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