“We are in a spiral”: joint health insurance companies are concerned about the evolution of their expenses

Joint social protection groups (co-managed by employers and unions) were concerned on Friday about a further deterioration in their supplementary health results, under the effect of the inexorable increase in French health spending.

“We are in a spiral, and Health Insurance is also seeing this, where we have a very sharp increase in health expenditure,” declared Marie-Laure Dreyfuss, the general delegate of the CTIP, which brings together joint social protection groups, on Friday, while presenting the sector’s annual results to the press.

Spending on the rise

CTIP members (who account for around 20% of the French supplementary health insurance market) saw their “health” reimbursements increase by 6.6% (to 6.7 billion euros), while they only increased their contributions by 6% (to 7.5 billion euros).

Supplementary health insurance “did not succeed in redressing the situation” after 2022, which saw a post-Covid catch-up in French health spending, she noted.

Medical fees are responsible for half of the increase in joint supplementary health spending, with an increase of 16.9% in 2023.

Optics and dental care also significantly fueled the increase, with increases of 22.4% for the former and 19.8% for the latter.

624 million euros in net profit

Despite the growing gap in health, joint groups have been able to remain profitable thanks to their financial products and their pension activities (compensation for long-term sick leave) and supplementary pensions. These represent a turnover slightly higher than that of health.

They thus achieved a total of 624 million euros in net profit in 2023, or 3.4% of their turnover. This ratio continues to improve, since the low of 2020 when it fell to -1.8%.

Personal protection activities saw their turnover increase by 10.6% to 7.8 billion, for benefits up 1.3% to 5.9 billion.

The “supplementary pension” activity saw its contributions increase by 8.7% to 1 billion euros.