Union fears over universal health insurance plan
The union’s national secretary, Louise O’Donnell, said the Dutch model had resulted in a three-tier system where almost half a million people were uninsured or defaulting on insurance payments.
She said the system had increased bureaucracy and more than half of Dutch hospitals that relied on funding from universal health insurance faced bankruptcy last year. Others had closed.
Ms O’Donnell, who was speaking at a conference in Dublin yesterday on the future of the health system, said the cost of health insurance in Holland had risen steeply since the compulsory system was introduced in 2006 — a basic package was priced at around 11% of household income.
“It is hard to see how Irish families will bear this kind of additional cost, or where the Government will find political support for it.”
On the day the Government confirmed the Croke Park agreement had delivered health service savings of over €400m in its first two years, Ms O’Donnell said health staff were willing and able to deliver more reforms even as budgets and staff numbers continued to fall. “But after the experience of the Health Service Executive, I believe the Government faces a major challenge to convince staff and the wider public that its change proposals really hold out the prospect of improved health services.”
The introduction by 2016 of a system of universal health insurance based on equal access for all has been promised by the Government. Under the system everyone will have cover for a range of standard services, with the State paying the cost of the insurance for those who cannot pay for it.
Minister of Health Dr James Reilly denied that he was trying to privatise the health service with the introduction of universal health insurance.
“We want to use the entire of what’s available to us in terms of health facilities — that includes the current public system and the private system,” he said.
The plan was to introduce an Irish model and it would work, said Dr Reilly, who pointed out that a white paper on how the system would work would be published by the end of this year.
Dr Reilly said he was acutely aware of the concern raised by Ms O’Donnell of a three-tier system. A similar situation had occurred in the US, where there was a huge raft of people with no insurance who face bankruptcy if they fell ill. “That is not a scenario that we are going to countenance in any remote way or fashion,” he said.
