Universal Health Insurance: Plan could have broken laws and cost families €5,000

The Government’s long-promised universal health insurance (UHI) plan would have risked breaking laws and forced families to pay as much as €5,000 a year if it was introduced.

Health Minister Leo Varadkar

The situation was revealed in three independent reports into the now sidelined policy last night as Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Health Minister Leo Varadkar denied the Coalition has been forced into an embarrassing climbdown.

Under the 2011 programme for government, the Coalition was due to replace the existing two-tier public-private health service with universal access to all supports.

The policy, which was championed by ex-health minister James Reilly and would have involved every citizen purchasing State-sanctioned private health insurance, was due to be implemented by 2016 before being delayed until 2019.

After an internal cabinet row over concerns the cost could destabilise the recovery, Dr Reilly commissioned an ESRI review in summer 2014 in one of his last decisions as minister.

Ex-health minister James Reilly

However, despite the ex-health minister’s repeated insistence UHI would reform the system, the two subsequent ESRI reports concluded it would have risked breaking key competition laws due to its impact on private health insurers prices and cost families up to €5,000 if introduced.

The reports, which warned any future alternative “should be reviewed in light of this [competition law] limitation”, and a separate KPMG review which also raised cost concerns were received by Health Minister Leo Varadkar over the summer but only published yesterday.

Health Minister Leo Varadkar

However, despite the conclusions, Government continued to claim last night it is only scrapping the current version of UHI and that another alternative could still be introduced.

Speaking to reporters last night, Mr Varadkar confirmed that while “the model studied by the ESRI will never come in” other options will be considered. However, he was unable to say when such an alternative could happen other than to say it will not be “in the term of the next government” as to implement it before other reforms would be to “put the cart before the horse”.

Asked if he is blaming Mr Reilly for the UHI climbdown, as only his version has been scrapped, he said “it was the model put forward by Government” and denied the scheme is being let down gently to avoid embarrassment.

However, it was rejected by Fianna Fáil, which accused the Coalition of “lying” to voters by claiming the scheme would be introduced and the Irish Medical Organisation which said UHI will go down as “one of the biggest cases of political mis-selling in recent history”.