Private health insurance in sickness risk management in Рoland: current situation and development prospects

The purpose of the paper is to analyse private health insurance in Poland and its development opportunities in the context of increasing need for private health care financing. Private health care financing can be considered as one of the methods of sickness risk management applied by households and enterprises. In Poland, despite theoretically wide scope of health services provided by the public system, a significant percentage of households uses privately funded medical services, which are out-of-pocket financed. Out-of-pocket payments contrary to premiums paid for private health insurance are usually unexpected, what provides a direct burden on household budgets, especially important in the case of pensioners, families with many children and people with relatively low incomes. In the paper an overview of health insurance market in Poland compared to European trends is presented. The current situation and the main challenges for the development of private health insurance are discussed.