Travel Insurance Payouts 'Due to Illness' up 45% in Q1 (yoy), Norwegian Insurance Companies Report
Guess what: as expensive payouts from insurance companies rise 'due to illness', insurance companies blame the elderly for feckless behaviour
Turns out that ‘illness’ isn’t a holiday fun spoiler in Central Europe only, as we talked about last week:
Now, Norwegian state broadcaster NRK has caught up and adds yet another angle to the current vacation mess: that of travel insurance companies.
Translation and emphases mine, as are the bottom lines.
Trond Oscar Fell Ill on Holiday—a Development Worries Both Doctors and Claims Managers
Insurance companies paid out NOK 110 million [approx. US$ 10-11m] more in sickness benefits for travellers in the first quarter than in the previous year.
By Philip Kollstrøm, NRK, 27 July 2024 [source]
*cough* *cough*.
Trond Oscar Haagensen from Bryne is sitting in his living room with the remote control in his hand.
It gets worse when you start thinking about it. It makes your throat itch more.
This is what his vacation is like now: hours of endless TV and coughing [don’t you have books, a hobby, or at least something you’re interested in?].
Caption: unfortunately for Trond Oscar Haagensen, it’s mostly bad things on TV, he says.
A few weeks ago, he was on holiday in Italy with his family. But their holiday was quickly cut short when he was admitted to a hospital in Italy with bronchitis.
The hospital stay that was anything but positive for Haagensen.
But luckily he got help. From the insurance company [don’t fall for this kind of agit-prop; Norwegians and legal residents here are all mandatorily enrolled in the state-run health insurance provider, Helsenorge; it is possible, and indeed a smart thing to do, to obtain a ‘European Health Insurance Card’ from them before venturing into the EU/EEA/Switzerland and the UK (as Norway isn’t a member of that bloc) that affirms, to any health insurance provider in the EU/EEA/Switzerland and the UK, that whatever (I’m unsure to what extent, for Helsenorge also advises one to obtain private travel insurance to cover repatriation) costs are run up for treatment, Helsenorge pays; getting private travel insurance is strongly recommended, esp. for ‘additional’ issues, such as repatriation, as occurred in the case of one Marit Holm (71) who broke her back on holiday, and the journey home cost more than NOK 2 million (approx. US$ 200K), which has a bit more information about the expenses of insurance companies].
Tremendous Increase
‘We see stories about people falling ill every year’, says Ole Irgens, Press Manager at Tryg Forsikring.
Getting sick on holiday is something most people fear. But now it’s happening more than ever.
Figures from Finance Norway, the industry organisation [lobby group] for banks, show that sickness payments for travel have increased by 45% in the first quarter of this year, compared to last year.
In the first quarter of 2023, the companies paid out NOK 254 million [approx. US$ 25m]. In the same quarter this year, insurance companies paid out NOK 367 million [approx. US$ 35m].
‘In addition, there is an increase in both cases and severity’, says Irgens [oh, look at that: it’s not just absolute numbers shooting through the roof, but it’s also that cases (sic) are more severe].
More Older People Travelling
Marte Kvittum Tangen, head of the Norwegian Association of General Practitioners, is concerned. She believes that an older and more travelled generation is to blame for the increase in illness [oh, sure, let’s blame those who, after a life spent working, are in retirement now and wish to travel the world; aren’t they ‘vulnerable’? Apparently, for travel insurance companies and GPs, they are more than a nuisance, in fact, if they suffer an illness while on vacation, they are to blame: classic victim-blaming, and since this comes from a physician, well, what does ‘first, do no harm’ mean to these people?].
We now have a generation of elderly people who have completely different travelling habits to the previous generation of elderly people [so what? Are you, Dr. Kvittum Tangen, implying that they should stay home, watch TV endlessly, and suffer?].
And with increased age, you often have more chronic diseases [speak for yourself]. This increases the risk of something happening when travelling abroad.
This also worries insurance companies, but for completely different reasons.
In a meetings between them and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the companies have warned against Norwegian doctors recommending that sick elderly people take a ‘last trip’ [isn’t it…odd that Big Business and Big Gov’t are ‘conspiring’ (remember: it just takes two parties) to ‘recommend’ this or that behaviour for—technically—private citizens? And for what? To save a few bucks? I do see the merit, kind of, here, but these meetings and ideas are tantamount to tyranny].
The Association of General Practitioners denies this.
‘This is a claim and a practice that I don’t recognise, and which I don't believe reflects what Norwegian doctors recommend to their patients,’ says Marte Kvittum Tangen, head of the Norwegian Association of General Practitioners, adding:
We are committed to informing people about the risks, and firmly believe that if you have chronic illnesses that increase the risk of travelling abroad, you should not go.
In 2023, half of young people lacked travel insurance. Read how this worries [financial giant] DNB.
Expensive and Difficult
For insurance companies, this is a difficult issue. According to Hege Saltboden-Karlsen, Head of Claims at Gjensidige Insurance, most elderly people travel during the winter months.
This is also the time of year when it is most difficult to assist those who need urgent help.
‘Insurance companies have to comply with airline rules, and transporting sick people home to Norway can sometimes be more challenging due to fewer scheduled flights with space’, she says.
In some cases it is also possible to send an air ambulance, but this is very expensive.
According to Sigmund Clementz, Press Manager at If Insurance, travel insurance is important in such situations: ‘Air ambulances can cost anything from hundreds of thousands to millions of kroner.’
Everyone is Responsible for Their Own Health
The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) states that it holds annual meetings with the travel and insurance industry to review trends, changes in travel patterns, challenges and regulations [oh, Norway, you’re such a gem: what’s the word we commonly use for collusion between Big Gov’t and Big Business?].
‘It's in our mutual interest to be well prepared and coordinated’, says Ingeborg Gloppen Johnsen, Communications Adviser at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The MFA points out that travellers are responsible for familiarising themselves with local conditions and making good safety assessments [good one; most people these days seem to be totally lost without their cell phones, map applications, and the like—when in their home country; now, imagine, if you will, what happens if these people venture abroad and have a health emergency in, say, Türkiye on the beach or the like].
‘This also includes assessing your own health, what you can tolerate, and what health services are available where you are travelling’, Ms. Gloppen Johnsen says [fair enough, can we now talk about the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Pandemic™’ shitshow when everyone’s own health suddenly became of utmost concern for the powers that be?].
Sending the Family on a Cruise
Trond Oscar Haagensen himself has no underlying illnesses. But his holiday has long since been ruined.
Now he’s sitting at home, trying to cough it off, while his family is on a cruise to celebrate his father’s 80th birthday.
‘I caught the European Championship final and the Wimbledon final’, says Haagensen [what a consolation prize, eh?].
Bottom Lines
Reading pieces such as the one above is quite…something; my own stance ranges from depressing to '*facepalming* myself, mainly because these articles are so…odd.
Truth be told, yes, NRK’s reporting is actually quite good relative to, say, their Austrian or German peers; yet, I’d also argue that the cognitive dissonance at display is also astounding.
Take, say, the notion of the drastic increase of insurance payouts: up 45% from 2023, if data for Q1 is to be believed. Let’s check back towards the end of the year to see how the summer went for them, o.k.?
Then there’s the entire collusion between Big Gov’t and Big Business, which reeks of…something else entirely. In reality, insurance premiums would reflect, to a certain, probabilistic degree, the odds (risk) for insurance providers to have to pay.
Please click on the below link to learn ‘more’ about Norway:
There’s nothing the gov’t could, or should, do to interfere with this principle, and that’s for two main reasons:
Under (near) ‘market’ conditions, insurance premiums for travel plans would inevitably rise, as they must, to reflect a more realistic outlook for insurance providers. Doing so would render it less likely for individuals to take out said insurance plans before venturing abroad, though, so this is kind of ‘good-bad’ for both parties as insurance companies will lose customers while travellers will, more often, appeal to the gov’t for help (which, in turn, might ‘lean’ on insurance companies to offer cheaper plans, thereby triggering a vicious cycle).
Gov’t could, alternatively, offer more comprehensive coverage through the state-run health insurance scheme, but given the very high taxes and social security premiums Norwegians (and foreign residents, like yours truly) already pay, this will make a majority of tax-payers cough up money for a select number of recipients, rendering this practice very much ‘unfair’. Just imagine, if you would, the gov’t would also ‘offer’ some ‘advice’ for age groups or countries, such as, if you’re 65+, don’t travel to ‘hot’ places during the following months because if you do, your risk is too high, hence Helsenorge won’t pay for you…stranger things have happened, eh?
So, there’s no good way out of this ‘mess’: we must either accept certain risks in life (driving a car is typically the most dangerous everyday activity people engage in; the risk of dying from Covid vs. dying in a car accident was significantly lower throughout the ‘Pandemic™’, by the way), and I’ve yet to see insurance companies hold regular coordination meetings with Big Gov’t once a year to ‘do something’™ about this. Perhaps because Big Gov’t is doing so without prompting, such as time-limited driver licences for elderly, all the regulations requiring your car to beep or slow down, kill switches, etc.
All told, the above reporting at least tells, albeit somewhere between the lines, that there was a whooping 45% increase in illness-related payouts in Q1 2024 relative to the same period in 2023.
Why this isn’t the major headline, well, I may only ‘guess’ or ‘marvel’ at.
On a personal level, it’s quite depressing to read about Trond Oscar Haagensen, sitting at home all by himself, ‘endlessly watching TV’.
What the piece didn’t mention, though, is that Mr. Haagensen was likely forbidden from joining the cruise not only because he was hospitalised—but also because, if he stood there at the gangway, coughing away, because the cruise provider would not have had him coming aboard for health-related reasons.
Moreover, how much of a ‘swing’, or ‘change’, in trends are these +45% increase in payouts? I mean, insurance companies are supposedly ‘doing the math’ to price their plans in accordance to risk, but apparently, this didn’t happen. How strange is that?
As such, the above piece is a mixed bag of things, esp. since it also shows, quite clearly, how bad our lives have become: Trond Oscar Haagensen has apparently no hobbies or interests, the thought of reading a book, drawing, cooking, or walking didn’t cross his seemingly eternally spotless mind.
How sad.
Did you realise how grateful he was for the help he received from the insurance company?
Is there any wonder that Big Gov’t and Big Business looks at we, the people, with contempt?
If they desire you to live in 15 minute cities, they don’t want you to travel. Travel will once again become a very rare experience for the average human. Costs of travel will continue to increase. Of course, they will never tell us the true reasons why more people are getting sick. They are counting on our slavishness.
Eh, I don't see anything particularly wrong with the article. Yes, older people (as well as young children) are more likely to get sick than other people, including when traveling. Assuming you don't want to just let sick tourists die (now there's an idea... might do something to fix the touristocalypse that so many cities are dealing with), someone has to pay for their medical care. My preferred solution would be for countries to require travelers to have adequate insurance when entering their country, so that the tax-payers of the destination country don't end up footing the bill.
As for Mr. Haagensen and his (lack of) hobbies: don't know about you, but when I'm legitimately ill, I cannot engage in activities that require a lot of brain power, and that would include reading. Me, I'd just listen to some podcasts with half a brain, which is not too different from watching TV.