Insurance Activity in Times of Covid

I recently read in the Venezuelan digital press that a day of hospitalization in a private clinic for a patient with COVID-19 can cost between $ 2,000 - $ 3,000.

This shocked me a lot since, in my family, there have been 2 cases of covid and the period of severity and recovery can last between 15 days and more than a month, depending on the conditions of each patient. Which makes us think of an expense that almost no Venezuelan can cover.

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"We would be talking about an average between 20 to 30 thousand dollars for 15 days of hospitalization."

Related to this, the Venezuelan government administration imposed by presidential decree obligations on insurance companies, which must cover the expenses of their clients.
Circular SAA-91109 of the Superintendency of Insurance Activity, dated March 26, indicates that insurance companies have the obligation to cover a maximum of 14 days of hospitalization and recognize a maximum of $ 23,595 in expenses for patients insured and cared for in top-notch clinics.

But the coin has two sides. We have two visions of the same problem, and that is that if in the case of patients, this represents an unaffordable expense, for insurance companies it also represents a crisis that could lead to a financial collapse, since in Venezuela, the lack of control of prices, the lack of national products, the difficult access to foreign currency, and hyperinflation do not allow for a healthy and stable administration.

Consequently, insurance companies have had to reinvent themselves in times of pandemic, adjusting the coverage of their policies.
All these changes end up affecting customers, policyholders, who see how all the time they have been contributing and the breadth of their policies would be insufficient to care for the health of their loved ones in the event of suffering from covid.

Life insurances

What about insurance in case of death?
As long as there is a valid policy and the policyholders are up to date with their payments, the beneficiaries should be covered in the event of death due to complications related to the coronavirus.

Insurance companies cannot change premiums or customer ratings. This should be the case even if the beneficiary contracts COVID-19, or if an increased risk of exposure is assumed due to work or travel reasons.

In many cases, companies would be offering new fixed-term and lifetime policies during the pandemic, adjusting waiting periods and increasing costs. Thus, when some life insurance companies increase the rates and the safest thing is that there is a domino effect with the other companies, which would do the same.

New questions will probably be incorporated in the previous interviews, related to the coronavirus when considering the new life insurance policies, and the applications could be delayed if, for example, the future insured made a trip to a country or city with high rates of contagion, or if you had close contact with someone who received a positive diagnosis.

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Since studies have shown that the elderly are more prone to death in case of covid infection, the coverage of the policies would be readjusted considering the age of the future insured.

Would this be an attack on the right to life?

Perhaps we could argue about it, but we must remember that the insurance activity is a business, it is a trade, where a well-formed company only expects to receive the return on its investments.