VHI leaves mentally ill to foot the bill

MENTALLY-ILL patients will not have counselling or other non-doctor services paid for by their Voluntary Health Insurance, Health Minister Mary Harney admitted yesterday.

Her remarks come a day after an international study found drugs may be ineffective in treating depression, prompting healthcare professionals to call for funding for alternative forms of treatment.

Ms Harney said the VHI Amendment Bill, agreed by the cross-party Oireachtas Health Committee yesterday, only allows cover for hospital stays and doctor fees.

“It does not cover the fee for other healthcare professionals,” she said.

This means sufferers of anorexia and other eating disorders will not have their therapies paid for, and those suffering depression will only have their drugs diagnosis paid for but not their therapy.

Fine Gael TD Dan Neville, who is president of the Irish Association of Suicidology, told yesterday’s committee a refusal to cover psychotherapy services amounted to “discrimination” against patients with mental illnesses.

The party’s health spokesman, Dr James Reilly, said it goes against the policy of the Health Service Executive to “get people out of hospital beds by using community facilities”.

He said: “Mental health is a serious issue. We [the committee] should be doing more about it. We should be sending out a strong message that more effort should be made in the area.”

Jan O’Sullivan of the Labour Party pointed to this week’s report on anti-depression drugs, which she said highlights the need to “develop treatments other than drugs, including psychotherapy”.

Ms Harney accepted a different approach might need to be examined.

“There has been a lot of debate about providing cover for rehabilitation, addiction counselling and alternative therapies,” she said.

“All insurers are reluctant to provide that kind of cover. Maybe we are too fast to give medicine and drugs and too slow to give counselling and psychotherapy.”

Ms Harney said the “minimum benefits approach” in the past has allowed for cheaper health insurance and may be why more than half of Irish people have private health insurance compared with a tenth of the British population.

The bill, agreed by the committee yesterday, allows for the State-owned VHI to be subjected to the same regulations as other insurance providers, under the Financial Services Regulatory Authority.