Sir - It is with great interest that I note BUPA's intention to invest in the Irish Hospital system. Greater private sector involvement in the provision as well as the financing of health care should be welcomed and indeed is ultimately inevitable. Cost and total expenditure escalation in healthcare has been a general feature of healthcare systems in developed countries for over 20 years. It is unrealistic to believe that the existing predominately publicly-orientated system can constrain or sustain current expenditure trends in the medium to long term.
The involvement of organisations such as BUPA (and one would hope VHI) in the direct provision of healthcare should allow for a greater control over expenditure which a publicly run hospital, by its nature, cannot achieve. Specifically a more direct relationship between private provision and financing is advantageous in terms of cost control. Ideally, private provision direct from the insurer would complement the existing system in much the same way as private insurance complements the public financing of healthcare.
Ultimately greater cost control may lead to a wider range of products becoming available in terms of health insurance packages with potentially lower entry thresholds. In turn this could lead to increasing numbers of subscriptions to private insurance thereby bringing a degree of relief to the demands being made on the public hospital system which, hopefully, would manifest itself in consistently acceptable waiting times across the system. - Yours, etc., Aodan Tynan, Health Economist,
Herbert Park Lane, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.