Health insurance contracts up 10% in 2022

The number of people looking for private health packages in Portugal rose by 10% or +3.4 million in 2022 according to the Portuguese Insurance Association (APS).

At a time when Portugal’s National Heath Service (SNS) is suffering from a lack of doctors in some specialities and the number of people without a family doctor has risen, an official APS source told the news agency Lusa, adding that the number of people taking out private healthcare packages had “increased at a faster pace”, fully confirming “a growing trend that has been continuing for some time in Portugal”.
“In addition to this increase in the health insured population, which has grown by almost 75% since 2010, the evidence shows that there has also been a growing use of cover”, states the association.
Between 2010 and 2019, the percentage of insured people who have used their health cover in their contracts has risen 53% to 61%.
“If the pandemic temporarily contained the number of people accessing private health services, the reality is that from 2022 exactly the opposite happened, causing a very significant increase in the use of health insurance”, explains the APS.
On the correlation between how the impact of increased inflation and falling purchasing power has affected the private health sector, the sector association said it could not establish a direct link between these circumstantial variables and taking on health insurance.
The APS said that the demand for health insurance “continues to be very buoyant” for individual insurance, family insurance, and companies insurance for staff.”