Chronically ill perceive barriers for switching health insurer

Chronically ill, disabled and people with a bad self-perceived health perceive more barriers for switching health insurer than others. This has been demonstrated in research conducted by NIVEL. The results have been published in BMC Health Services Research.

In 2006, a new health insurance law has been introduced in the Netherlands. The possibility for consumers to switch health insurer is an important characteristic of this new law. The underlying idea is that the insured switch, because of their dissatisfaction with the premium and quality of care of their health insurer. This will force insurers to improve their balance between price and quality of care. In the investigated period, only a small percentage of the people switched insurer, namely: 6% in 2007, 4% in 2008 en 3% in 2009.

Barriers
Interestingly, people with a chronic illness or a disability and people with a lower self-perceived health do not switch less often than others. However, they do perceive more barriers to switch. They think that it is, for example, not possible for them to switch, or they fear getting into (administrative) problems when switching. People appear not to switch because of quality of care. Switching is mainly based on the premium. Therefore it might be questioned whether the new health insurance law will result in a better balance between price and quality.

Panels
The research has been conducted in the National Panel of people with Chronic illness or Disability (NPCD) and the Dutch Health Care Consumer Panel from the NIVEL. Data were available for each year and for almost 2,000 respondents per panel. The NPCD consists of about 3,500 people with one or more medically diagnosed chronic disease(s) and/or moderate to severe levels of physical disability. The Dutch Health Care Consumer Panel consist of about 6,000 people from which samples can be drawn that are representative of the general population in the Netherlands for age and sex.

Funding
- Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport
- Dutch  Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment