Health insurance became expensive for the beneficiaries, who have private health insurance due to the high price on medicines and expensive medical services in the industry. In the case of some companies, insurance premiums have increased by almost 15% for consumers.
The fact that healthcare has become more expensive in Georgia is confirmed by official statistics. In December last year, prices in the healthcare group increased by almost 8% compared to the same period of the last year.
"Unfortunately, the data for 2020 give us an unfavorable picture for the industry. Compared to previous years, both insurance premiums in terms of attraction and production have changed significantly, and we have unfavorable data on losses. In 2020, the loss of insurance companies increased significantly, which is due to several factors. The main thing is that inflationary processes have a huge impact on medical services, the second part of which is the change in consumption, which depends on the environmental factors that create the pandemic.
Today, the insurance industry is facing the problem that the consumption of medical services is changing, so the industry is unable to generate insurance premiums to offset the increased losses. For all these reasons, the change in insurance premiums is on the agenda in the direction of growth, which growth depends on many factors. These are inflationary processes in medical services, which affect all this," Sopho Lebanidze, head of PSP Insurance, told BM.GE. She adds that PSP insurance packages will be adjusted within the range of 15%.
The change in prices for insurance packages also affected GPI Holding policyholders. As the director of communications of the company explains, the reason for the price increase is the grown cost on medical services and medicines due to the impact of inflation. According to Tina Stambolishvili, a pandemic is making a big contribution to this process, as a result of which the demand for medical services has almost tripled.
"The cost of the package is affected by inflation in medical services, including rising prices for medicines, which forces us to adjust the price of the package. There was a slight increase in prices last year, however we also improved the service and offered better terms to the customers. If this continues in the long run, the price increase will definitely be reflected in the health insurance premium. It will be inevitable. At this stage, the price increase is not going on and we are monitoring the processes,” said Tina Stambolishvili.
In December, the annual inflation rate reached the record of the last decade and amounted to 13.9%. According to the forecast of the Central Bank of Georgia, inflation will start to decrease from March this year.
