It is fascinating to see how much private healthcare insurance has risen in Northern Europe over the last few years.

From close to zero there are now around 180,000 Norwegians with private healthcare insurance, according to Eystein Hauge at Teres.

The figure for Denmark is much higher says Martin Koch Petersen at the Danish Federation of private Hopsitals. He puts it at over 1m and says it is growing at 20-30pc a year. That means that one in five Danes has private cover.

At first sight, it is puzzling as to why countries with excellent NHS systems should be seeing such rapid growth. Koch Petersen says that the reason in Denmark is simple. “People use healthcare insurance as a way of attracting and retaining staff. It has very little to do with real need.”
So in both countries private healthcare’s growth has more to do with competition for skilled workers than basic need. In Denmark unemployment dropped from 4% in nearly 2006 to less than 2% in late 2008. (It is now back up to around 4%). Norway dropped as low as 2.4% in July 2007 and is now at just 2.7%.
Recession? What recession?

Where ever it has come from, it has certainly helped the Danish private sector industry as insurants account for around a third of total sales which the Federation puts at around 2.5% of the total healthcare services market of 100bn Dkr, in other words 2.5bnDkr or €330m.

Publicly, the Danish Federation is wailing and gnashing its teeth over the manifesto of the socialist party which is ahead in the polls and may well win next year’s general election in Denmark. But privately, Koch Petersen admits that actually he doesn’t think it will have much of an impact. He calculates that on average it will cost employers just an extra €100 per capita per employee. That sounds a cheap way to keep staff.

Sadly, few other European countries can boast similar low unemployment rates. Even neighbouring Sweden is stuck at 8.1% as is Poland, Greece, like the USA, is at just over 10%, Ireland at 14.1% and Spain is at over 20%. And guess what these figures mean for private healthcare insurance?