This follows from a news release of the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) of 21 April 2020. During the corona crisis, health insurers can jointly agree to provide financial support to healthcare providers. Currently, healthcare providers who are not directly involved in the care to corona patients, such as physiotherapists, maternity nurses and district nurses, are facing severe financial problems due to loss of work. In order to prevent the loss of these types of healthcare due to bankruptcy of the healthcare providers, health insurers may jointly provide financial support. The financial support regards a continuity contribution and an advance payment.
Martijn Snoep, chairman of the board of the ACM, says: “We dread to think that part of the healthcare will be lost in the future because healthcare providers are unable to make end meet financially. This will cause damage not only in the short term, but also in the long run. Therefore, it is important to support healthcare providers financially now. Health insurers may do this together because they have contracts with different healthcare providers. This way, all health insurers can continue to meet their duty of care after the crisis too, and insured persons will retain access to sufficient, good and affordable health care.”
What does the joint financial support imply?
Health insurers can jointly agree to donate a continuity contribution and an advance payment to care providers who have lost work due to the corona crisis. The continuity contribution is a generic scheme, based on a fixed percentage of the turnover from the health insurer. This will allow these healthcare providers to pay a great deal of their fixed expenses. For example, these are housing costs and staff costs. They can also continue paying self-employed workers and subcontractors. If the financial problems are urgent, health insurers can give healthcare providers an advance payment. In addition, health insurers can always give extra financial support in individual cases.
Cooperation is necessary and therefore allowed
According to the ACM, the cooperation between the health insurers is necessary in order to maintain the care during and after the crisis. Healthcare providers receive their income from different health insurers. Without the joint financial support, there is a risk that for some care providers the support will come too late or will not be sufficient to allow them to carry on after the crisis.
Together, the health insurers can quickly set up a feasible and effective scheme. The ACM has imposed the condition that the health insurers will hire an independent agency to calculate the amount of the contribution. It is also important that the agreements made by the health insurers are minimum agreements. Individual health insurers can always provide more support to help care providers. The arrangements fit within the legal framework because they are temporary and do not exceed what is necessary.
Supervision by ACM
Normally, such arrangements would be regarded as restrictive on competition. Health insurers would have to set up such a scheme individually for their contracted care providers. However, during the corona crisis the ACM relaxes its supervision on competition rules and allows businesses to make agreements, which would not be allowed during normal times. The ACM helps businesses that wish to make agreements together to limit the economic consequences of the crisis. However, the ACM also warns businesses not to take advantage of the situation. Read more about this in our previous articles about the supervision of the ACM and the approach of competition authorities during the corona crisis.
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