Health insurance - A symptom of collapse

Yesterday’s announcement that health insurance provider Aviva is to increase its fees by an average of 5.2% next month makes it even more difficult to believe that our health service is not careering towards some kind of catastrophe.

This, the latest in a long line of premium increases — allied to reduced tax breaks for health cover — makes it likely that the exodus from private health care insurance schemes will continue apace, if not accelerate.

That this comes at the very moment that qualifying criteria for medical cards is under review suggests a pincer movement that may bring new levels of hardship for society’s squeezed middle. Government must advanced proposals that show their healthcare policies are fit for purpose and that tens of thousands of citizens will not be abandoned in a no man’s land between private cover and the comfort offered by a medical card.