Car before health. “Romanians are ten times more willing to secure their car than their own life”

In a year marked by fiscal uncertainties, frequent costs and catastrophes, the Romanian insurance market shows a major discrepancy: Romanians protect their material goods, but hesitate when it comes to health or life insurance.

Photo source: Shutterstock

The official data for 2024 and the first months of 2025 show that over 80% of the insurance market is occupied by general policies (car, housing, goods), and of these, almost 70% are car insurance. Life insurance represents only 19%, and health, although they are growing, do not exceed 2% of the market.

RCA is mandatory

“In other words, Romanians are ten times more willing to provide their car than health. But that does not necessarily mean that we care more about the body than by cholesterol. Acquiring a RCA policy is mandatory by law, it is not a simple option. its circuits, not individual lives.explained for Adevărul, Florin Poenaru, anthropologist, lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology and Social Assistance (University of Bucharest).

Therefore, it is not an alleged cultural feature of the Romanians. “The result of a minimum conformity to the rules in a society that is dominated, not to say, obsessed, of cars and their cultural and symbolic load, is more hasty.” add it.

“At first glance, health or life insurance suffers from a major problem: distrust (an important book on the subject of mistrust, which is worth reading polemically, is that of anthropologist Radu Umbreș). Police are hard to understand, they have many hidden clauses, and there were few cases in which the companies have to pay. The fact that private hospitals tax separately and additionally, even in the case of an insurance policy ””Florin Poenaru believes.

“Private health and life insurance remains a luxury of the rich”

In his opinion, the real reason for the small share of health and life insurance is one of the material as possible: the low income. Nearly 60% of Romanian employees say that salaries only arrive for current expenses, living from one month to another.

“They have no possibility to save or make other expenses outside the strict necessary. Any unexpected expense (such as a serious teeth disease, to say, for which an insurance is several thousand euros a year) can bring them to the wood dig. 13% of the employees declare that they have serious difficulties. In 2024, average net salary was around 5,600 RON. However, over 30% of the employees earned below this amount, closer to the minimum wage. In this context, realization of those who work, private health and life insurance remains a luxury of the rich. They have enough capital that they can put a price on their lives. The lives of others are dispensable, it is not worth the effort to insure. And we are talking about a socio-economic situation prior to the new austerity measures, which will only deepen this reality and its cleavages ”, Complete the anthropologist.

In addition to the material aspect, a fact is added: the fundamental and increasing distrust of a good part of our compatriots to any source of institutional authority, be it state (especially) or private, continues Florin Poenaru.

“By withdrawing the state from the sphere of social protection and the increasing privatization of the risk people have learned that they must handle themselves (or with their extended families) in all aspects of life, but especially in crisis situations. Private insurances are not the expression of solidarity, but of accumulation. From their origin in the Italian commercial ports The future is transformed into capital and profit. supports the specialist.

“Welfare is considered an individual responsibility”

In turn, Răzvan Dumitru, Sociologist and Social Anthropologist explain for the truth: “Romanians emphasize material values more than immaterials such as life and health, a feature of poorer societies, with a memory of recent poverty. As long as they do not face an imminent loss (health and life), they are not seen as an emergency or a very high risk of most people.

He also points out that, in Romania, the existence of a universal medical insurance system has reduced the fear related to access to care. “We live in a less individualized society than those in the West, where life and health insurance culture has developed. In these, the social solidarity based on human and close human relations is lower, the unexpected individuals support/help the others in cases of force majeure or major risk, so that the assignment also appears as an effect of an accentuated individualization of the society where the entire responsibility on the risks falls on Pindivid. And health and life are related to individual responsibility and less destiny ”says Răzvan Dumitru.

So, in the West, individuals know that in the face of a major risk they remain alone. In Romania, however, family and close relationships still work as a form of solidarity. Paradoxically, that is why personal risks are not treated with the same emergency.

“In the Romanian society, the risk of material properties is perceived to be more important, under the conditions of a persistent culture of precariousness. The help in case of material loss is less expected from the close ones, and the well -being is considered an individual responsibility, from where and Increased interest in goods insurance“, concludes Răzvan Dumitru.