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.