Soaring insurance costs - Insurers make us pay for their loss

The inflation data recently released by the Central Statistics Office indicated that insurance costs have been soaring. The cost of health insurance has increased by 22% in the past 12 months, while home insurance premiums have risen by 24.3% over the same period, and the cost of car insurance has increased by 20%.

Serious questions must be asked about these increases. The level of car accident claims would appear to be falling. In the previous 12 months, road fatalities fell by 20.7%. Health cost inflation has been running at less than 5% annually, and there was no rise during March of this year, and it was just 0.1% in February.

Moreover the value of cars have been coming down, so what is driving the cost of motor insurance up so dramatically? Similar questions should be asked about the increased cost of home insurance. Construction costs have been coming down, so why is home insurance going up? There have been suggestions that the level of burglaries could be expected to increase during recessionary times, but this is not borne out by the latest statistics. The 24,624 burglaries in 2008 were actually down from 26,381 in 2005. That represented a decline of 6.6% over those three years.