SEVERAL private practitioners are considering taking legal action against a group of insurance firms, saying they have been blacklisted for refusing to agree to the companies’ terms.
They say that, late last year, a group of 14 major insurance firms allegedly formed a consortium agreeing on fixed prices for insurance premiums and striking deals with certain private clinics while leaving others out. The Medical Association claims it was not consulted on the matter as it should have been, and has described the grouping of companies as a “cartel”.
The Association further argues that the insurance firms violated trade-union norms and ethics and arbitrarily decided which clinics would be part of their policy.
“What they did was to say ‘take it or leave it’,” the association’s chairman Antonis Vassiliou told the Cyprus Mail. He went on to add that clinics which did not agree to the firms’ terms and prices were subsequently blacklisted, as the insurance policies only carried partial coverage for those clinics.
He said that even though the policies state that clients may visit any doctor of their choice, once the contract is signed, clients are informed by mail that only 80-85 per cent coverage is provided at certain clinics.
“Obviously, people will think twice about visiting that clinic, assuming that, since it is not fully covered by the insurance firms, then its quality of services must be lacking in some way,” argued Vassiliou.
As a result, a monopoly was being created in the health services sector, with prices being fixed by insurance firms, not by doctors, he accused. “Clearly, there is something very wrong with this picture,” said Vassiliou. “This insults both doctors’ prestige and dignity and compromises the right of citizens to choose where they get treatment.”
The Medical Association has challenged insurance firms to explain what criteria they adopted in discriminating among doctors, given that all clinics comply with standards set out by the Health Ministry.
Some owners of clinics have already reported the companies to the Commerce Ministry’s Competition Protection department, expected to rule on the matter sometime soon. If the insurance firms are found at fault, then legal action could be taken against them and the issue resolved in court.
But Vassiliou said yesterday that such confrontation could be avoided if the firms agreed to negotiate with doctors. That would satisfy one of their main demands of being consulted on the issue, as a matter of principle. Vassiliou reiterated that the firms’ action had primarily been “unethical and unacceptable.”
While the association tried to play down the financial aspect, Vassiliou noted that some clinics were also losing out on business, with incomes dropping by as much as 30 per cent. For example, the price-fixing by the insurance companies resulted in lower costs for some forms of surgery, meaning the clinics that were out of the loop could not compete. Some doctors claim that fees plummeted after the “cartel” was formed.
Vassiliou met with representatives of the insurance firms last December in a bid to work things out. “They said they would get back to us, but we haven’t heard from them since,” he said.
A spokesman for the insurance firms was not available for comment.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
