Rebuilding Ireland - It’s time to press for real change

HOW appropriate it is, how illustrative, that as Taoiseach Brian Cowen prepares to dissolve the 30th Dáil that a row impossible in a country with an egalitarian health service has broken out.

Earlier this month health insurer VHI announced staggering price increases of up to 45%. Yesterday the semi-state company was criticised for reducing cover without properly informing its customers. Aviva has just announced a 14% premium increase weeks after chief executive Jim Dowdall assured us all the company had no plans to increase fees, an assurance that must have appealed to very many of the 30,000 people — Mr Dowdall’s figure — who joined Aviva in recent weeks.

These increases will put health insurance beyond the reach of very many people who will have to fall back on public services putting even more pressure on a stretched but contracting system. None of this would matter if we had a universal health service funded through taxation, a service that treated everyone the same. Some of us already pay the money except insurance companies rather than health providers get it.