THE VHI will come under the remit of the financial regulator in time, Minister for Health Mary Harney insisted yesterday.
She was responding to a report in yesterday's Irish Timeswhich revealed EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has sharply criticised the Government's decision to further postpone reform of the State health insurer.
He wrote to Ms Harney last week that he was beginning to doubt the Government would ever fulfil its legal obligation to bring the VHI within the remit of the financial regulator. The deadline for doing so has been postponed a number of times, and was extended to the end of March next by Ms Harney before Christmas.
Ms Harney said she was dealing with the issues raised. “We want to see the VHI regulated as quickly as possible. I intend to bring proposals to the Government over the next few weeks around the issues that effect the VHI, including the introduction of full risk equalisation,” she said.
“We have to go back to the drawing board again because the Supreme Court did strike down the risk equalisation model . . . without risk equalisation it is impossible for a company that has such a dominant number of the over-60s population to be able to compete on a level playing field with its competitors, so all the issues around competition, around authorisation and around risk equalisation will be advanced by the Government in the first three months of this year,” she added.
“I am confident that it will be regulated in time, but we have to make sure that there’s a sustainable model going forward, and clearly a company that’s losing €170 million a year on its over-60s without risk equalisation is not in a position to be financially sustainable, and these are the issues we have to deal with . . .
“I remain determined, and so does the Government, to see a level playing field, to see all the companies regulated on the same basis, but to see it in the context of risk equalisation where younger people support the insurance of older people,” she continued.
Ms Harney said she would love to see Prof Tom Keane continue to make a contribution to reforming the health service. Her comments came a day after Prof Keane, director of the national cancer control programme, indicated he was interested in the post of chief executive of the HSE. Prof Brendan Drumm’s five-year contract comes to an end this summer.