Research has revealed that New Zealand health insurance policies offer little protection when it comes to mental illnesses.
The research was conducted by Gabrielle Jenkin and Samantha Ernst of Otago University and involved 36 policies from five insurers in New Zealand.
The study revealed that 55% of the policies provided some cover for psychiatric consultations, 11% for clinical psychologist consultations, and 36% for psychiatric consultations, with many of the policies providing only enough cover for a couple of hours consultation and most had inadequate cover for hospital stays,
Fairfax Media reported.
"We recognise that insurance underwriting is complex and that companies are balancing risk of claims against income. However, it is notable that the available cover is negligible compared to that available for many other common health problems," the researchers wrote.
Chris Watney, head of product and marketing at
Southern Cross Health Society, said the company did not provide coverage for acute conditions or chronic conditions and disabilities likely to be present for six months or more in order to make health insurance affordable and accessible to many people.
"Our cover recognises that lots of Kiwis face mental health issues at some time in their lives and includes benefits for psychiatric hospitalisation and ancillary charges, psychiatrist consultations, and psychologist consultations," he told
Fairfax.
"Research we've undertaken acknowledges mental wellbeing as a top priority and we are looking at ways to best serve our membership by providing access to appropriate preventative and proactive measures while maintaining the affordability of our health insurance."
Meanwhile, Graeme Edwards of
AIA said his company was focused on “major medical” cover, while mental health would usually fall under doctor and specialist cover.
"However it's an interesting discussion and perhaps there is a market gap that needs addressing as mental health issues are now more widely recognised," Edwards told
Fairfax.
A similar approach was adopted by
Partners Life, according to Naomi Ballantyne. She said that the public health system provides treatments for mental health illnesses free of charge, but in many cases, the treatment would not have a curative effect in the same way the treatment of other conditions might.
"What happens with mental health is that they manage you, they don't try to cure you. If you promote insurance helping to pay for that there's a whole bunch of problems and issues around that... you don't want insurance to encourage a treatment provider dependency," she told
Fairfax.
Ballantyne said that adding cover for chronic conditions will result to higher premiums.
Roger Styles, chief executive of the Health Funds Association of New Zealand, said he was surprised that the coverage was as high as it was. Consumer demand would have prompted insurers to add it, he said.
"You wouldn't have seen this a decade ago. You see things added when people have trouble accessing them in the public system. A couple of decades ago it was elective surgery. In the last few years it has been cancer and non-pharmac drugs and mental health," he told
Fairfax.
Styles said consumers can opt for the type of policy that best suits their needs. "Not every plan will cover everything. It would be prohibitively expensive to do that."
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