Inflationary pressures in the Irish Private Health Insurance market

The Society's Healthcare Committee has prepared a research paper on inflationary pressures in the Irish Private Health Insurance market.  This has produced some interesting findings in relation both to recent trends and future projections, including:

• the ageing of the insured population contributed approximately 2.5% p.a. to claims inflation between 2009 and 2015.
• the potential inflationary impact of projected future demographic changes on health insurance premiums from 2016 to 2046 will be in the region of +1.3% p.a., with the strongest effect (approximately 1.7% p.a.) expected over the period 2016 to 2026 with the inflationary impact gradually weakening in the years after that.
• there is a good correlation between the penetration rate of private health insurance cover and the excess of premium inflation over growth in disposable incomes.

The paper is available below.

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