Insurance Broker Notes Industry-Wide Claim Increases and Prostate Cancer Trend

Well in some respects things are a bit easier for us, as the actual number of health related claims seems to have levelled off in our Practice, but overall we understand Industry claim volumes are still elevated. We were chasing a surgical pre-approval and the claims person we were dealing with was explaining that they normally see 400-500 new health claims each day (large insurer, not Southern Cross) but at the moment they were seeing 700+.

Hence the drawn out turnaround times. Our other main insurer is still also reporting increased volumes, although officially all are tight lipped about what is going on. Whilst the actual number of claims we are seeing is subsiding, there seems to be a worrying trend emerging in terms of prostate cancers. Normally we might see 1-2 cases per year but at the moment we have 3 new cases within as many months, two which are moving rapidly and necessitating urgent surgery. Now these might just be quite normal events given the average ages of our clients (I’m 67 and have been doing this for 35 years – so our base is aging) but it does feel like some of the bleak T Cell predictions I heard 12-18 months ago, may be coming to pass.