Private health cover - This is no small matter, minister

Figures given in the Dáil by Health Minister Mary Harney in response to a parliamentary question indicate that 21,000 people cancelled their private health insurance during the first six months of 2009.

In terms of the 2,299,000 people who had health insurance at the beginning of the year the minister depicted the loss as “small,” but it could have tremendous ramifications.

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association has expressed concern, because it believes that the number of people discontinuing private insurance cover could more than double to 56,000 people by the end of this year.

The VHI has issued an even starker assessment, predicting the figures for people cancelling their private health insurance could more than double this year’s rate and reach 200,000 by the end of 2010. The current state of the health service does not inspire confidence and the seeming complacency of the minister in dismissing the recent drop as “small” should be a cause for real alarm.

For a number of years, in the midst of the Celtic Tiger boom, the percentage of people taking out private health insurance rose steadily until last year. The problem now is not just that the rate of increase has evaporated but there has been a decline in the actual number of those with private health insurance, and this decline is projected to increase at an alarming rate.

If the number of cancellations were to double every year, no one would have health insurance in less than seven years.

As the number of those paying for insurance drops, the premiums will have to increase further. The minister not only dismissed the decline as small, but she indicated that she did not know the actual cause of the drop because “no survey of reasons” has been conducted.

Some of those people who have suspended their private health insurance are likely to become a burden on the public health system. This should be of distinct concern to the minister and her department.

Part of the problem is apparently that many of those people who have lost their jobs in recent months can no longer afford private health insurance, and this is then being compounded by a rise in the cost of health insurance.

At the beginning of the year, VHI increased its prices by an average of 23% and Quinn Healthcare upped its prices by 16%, while Hibernian Aviva raised its prices by 12% this month. With so many people dropping out of private health insurance, the rates are likely to go up further again, and this will inevitably evolve into a vicious circle.

As more people become dependent on the public healthcare it will drain the already stretched public resources. Ms Harney should realise this is not a “small” or trivial matter; it has very serious ramifications.