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contracts on providing services in the field of occupational medicine, employers may also conclude agreements concerning the provision of medical services as part of so-called medical subscriptions46 or workers’ health insurance covering various scopes of health services. This market segment is undergoing dynamic development. It means that despite lack of rules or regulations supporting private health insurance market development, a so-called quasi-health insurance market has emerged, where medical packages or subscriptions directed at enterprises (workers; medical subscriptions) and individual patients are offered. They are very frequently sold not through insurance companies but directly by service providers. Figure 3 The structure of household healthcare expenditure in 2009 (in %)
66,8
0,0
20,0
40,0
15,5
60,0
80,0
14,9 2,6 0,2
100,0
Pharmaceuticals and medical equipment Dentistry Outpatient clinics (POZ) and specialist care Hospital services Nursing care services Source: Based on: Health and healthcare in 2010 [in Polish], GUS, Warsaw 2012, pp. 270-273.
Quasi-health insurance, which accounted for almost 6% of the private healthcare market in Poland in 2009, served to partially fill the gap in the Polish healthcare system related to shortage of private, supplementary health insurance, despite existing demand for it. Experience of numerous countries demonstrate that development of the health insurance market, both state and private, is a positive stimulant for the whole healthcare sector development. So far, Poland has not taken advantage of other European countries’ experience in reforming the sector, where an essential element of health policy was the establishment of legal institutions for the functioning of private health insurance. Poland, Hungary and Greece find themselves at the low end of the list of European countries in terms of private health insurance expenditure per capita47.
46 Medical subscriptions are viewed primarily as an element of employer’s human resources policy, directed ate employee motivation (as part of remuneration) but they also bring additional benefits including better working time organisation through shortening of the diagnostic process, which means shortening the time of workers’ sick absences at the same time. 47 Cf.: European Insurance in Figures, CEA Statistics No. 44, December 2011 http://www. insuranceeurope.eu/uploads/Modules/Publications/european-insurance-in-figures-2011.pdf.