Risk equalisation is not small beer
Dealing with risk equalisation, he erroneously chose to compare the consumption of beer with health insurance.
His simplistic and inappropriate comparison does little to explain just why Mary Harney has made the necessary decision to commence risk equalisation, nor does it do justice to the intelligence of the reader.
To compare buying beer with buying health insurance is unacceptable. Firstly, it trivialises the matter. Health insurance is about how society supports each of us when we're ill not how we choose to spend our free time.
Secondly, it misleadingly compares buying beer (which is optional for most of us) with buying cover for, say, life- saving surgery (in which the victim has precisely no choice).
Better analogies would be electricity or public transport where we all pay a community rate so that those of us who live in rural areas aren't priced out of the market.
Like health insurance, the impact on any individual who is excluded (by design) from these utilities would be severe (although not devastating, as would be the case in health insurance).
By triggering risk equalisation, the Tánaiste has taken this necessary step to ensure that access to health insurance will remain affordable to people of all ages into the future. As far as I know, exclusion from the beer market is unlikely to lead to catastrophe.
Toni Sheehan
Larkinley Lodge
Lewis Road
Killarney
Co Kerry.
