Health insurers in Slovakia can be proud of their performance for 2011, having met the annual target to over 109% and generating income of EUR 3.881 bn, but the new government is planning to reintroduce its profit ban on health insurers, a step that could shake up the whole sector.
While in power in 2007, PM Robert Fico’s government introduced a law that essentially prevented health insurance companies from generating profit from public health insurance, and led to lawsuits against the Slovak Republic and it eventually being declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court.
Dutch owner of health insurers Dovera and Apollo, the company HICEE (part of financial group Penta), was trying to sue Slovakia for loss of profit via dividends. The company was claiming for lost dividends after the government of Robert Fico changed the law. Slovakia won the case, though, with the arbitration court ruling that the company had no claim to the dividends.
Now that Robert Fico is back as Prime Minister, he has already instructed new health minister Zuzana Zvolenska to find a way to implement the concept so that it is not contestable or unconstitutional. The move will prevent health insurance companies from being able to handle profit, as the government regards it as public resources.
……because then a) the State Minister , PM etc would have to take the blame for the slow payment to hospitals, the lack and short fall of cash in the health pot , debt collection and would have no one to blame for any of these and other troubles but the Insurance Co. b) …there is better room for corruption if the State does not actually collect and administer the system and only acts as the custodian of the Health Financial System .
Well done BnM. Why the SK allowed these vultures into the country is a mystery to me. With less than 6 million people to provide for why are health contributions not collected by the state as part of the tax system? That way, in theory, all the contributions would go to health care not to pay investor dividends, legions of non jobs etc.