Funding healthcare - Universal system is the best option

ANNOUNCING staggering increases — up to 45% — in health insurance premiums the very month budget cuts plunder families’ wage packets and child benefit, VHI chief executive Jimmy Tolan said yesterday that Ireland’s health insurance market was broken.

When you consider that on one day this week nearly 600 people were parked on hospital trollies waiting for our health system to catch up with their need, it is arguable that our health service is close enough to being broken too. This week’s trolley figures are far in excess of the level Health Minister Mary Harney accepted, some years ago, would represent a national emergency. Even in the depth of winter the trolley figures are unacceptable. In this environment it is natural that anyone who can — or was able to — afford private health insurance would have sought the peace of mind that it can bring. No one wants to be the next Susie Long or toss and turn on a trolley in a hospital corridor if they can help it.

Yesterday’s spectacular increases, which Mr Tolan suggests are a direct result of having to fund 80% of private health costs with just 60% of the market, will put that option beyond the reach of even more people. In a time fraught with worries about jobs, increasing mortgages, soaring education costs and disappearing pensions, middle Ireland is once again cut to the bone. It is hard to see how this sector, by and large hard working and independent, can ship more punishment.

Spin it any way you like — this is a failure of political philosophy and policy. Bertie Ahern’s insane diktat that no one be made redundant when the health boards were amalgamated set the tone but matters were exacerbated by Ms Harney’s preference for private rather than public medicine and co-location. This process led to the shocking claim by Mr Tolan that public hospital beds no longer represented value for their customers. How can this be? Surely the HSE can be at least as efficient as any private hospital. It is a terrible indictment that a private hospital can be profitable and still provide services at a far lower cost than public hospitals.

Though it is hard to be cheery when faced with a 45% increase in insurance premiums it may just be possible that 2011 will be a good year for our health services and all of us who depend on them.

Launching the HSE Service Plan Christmas week, HSE chief executive Cathal McGee signalled a significant shift away from the policies of his predecessor who had placed an emphasis on bed closures. This is just one in a range of policy reviews that may move the HSE closer to what we all want it to be.

Even more significantly 2011 is an election year and for the first time the parties expected to form the next government have proposed variations on a universal health system free at the point of delivery. If this comes to pass we may have a health system in line with the best in Europe, better fit for purpose and, most of all, one that might make yesterday’s increases irrelevant.

This would be a wonderful achievement and one of the many steps we need to take to rebuild this society.