The Tel Aviv District Court has dismissed a request to register a NIS 12 million class-action suit against Israel Phoenix Assurance Ltd. (TASE: PHOE1;PHOE5) for allegedly misleading health insurance policyholders.
The petitioners claim that they bought individual "Medical" and "Leila Tov" (Good Night) health insurance policies for state employees, which Phoenix issued. They claim that the policies were wholly or partly overlapping resulting in them purchasing unnecessary coverage, redundant coverage, and overpaying premiums. The petitioners asked the court to order the company to refund the excess premiums to the policyholders.
Phoenix said in its statement of response that there was no overlapping coverage between the policies, but that they were cumulative.
Judge Amiram Benyamini ruled that even if the petitioners' claim was true, in view of the multiple layered structure of Israeli health insurance, there appeared to be no way to prevent this situation. He said that the Supervisor of Insurance has not banned insurers from selling multiple health insurance policies to an individual on the condition that they draw his attention to the possibility of redundancies.
Benyamini added that the petitioners' demand that Phoenix allow each insured person to buy only the coverage specific to his or her needs was inapplicable. He said that the purchase of insurance packages might actually make insurance cheaper, compared with buying dozens of different coverage items.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 2, 2008
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