VHI want to increase premiums

About 1,500,000 VHI customers could be forced to pay increases of up to 9% in their health insurance.

The application for the increase in charges has been sent to the Minister for Health, Michael Martin, and he is expected to make a decision on the matter before the end of this month.

A similar application was turned down last year on the basis that it could fuel inflation but an increase of just over 6% was allowed last February to help offset costs.

The VHI is proposing to introduce a ‘risk equalisation’ strategy, which spreads the cost of high-risk customers across all insurance providers and prevent the targeting of young and healthy clients by competitors of the VHI.