Aviva has announced it is to increase the cost of its health insurance polices for the fourth time in less than 18 months.
Prices for many of the insurers subscribers are to rise by 2.7 per cent from May 16th.
The company announced a 15 per cent increase in March and a further 9 per cent increase last August. Another price hike of 14 per cent was rolled out in March of last year.
On this occasion the company has blamed the “significant health insurance levy increase of approximately 40 per cent” and said that changes to the age related tax credit system was also a contributory factor.
At the beginning of the year the Minister for Health Dr James Reilly announced a 40 per cent increase in the Government levy on private health insurance.
The State provides age-related tax credits for older people to help meet the higher cost of health insurance and to ensure they pay the same amount net of these tax credits for their health insurance as younger adults pay. These credits are funded by a levy paid by health insurers.
The increase saw the levy, in place since 2009, increase from €205 to €285 for an adult and from €66 to €95 for a child. Aviva said at the time that it would absorb it “for now”.
“We are extremely aware of the impact any price increase has on our customers, whatever the amount,” a company spokesman said. “We are the last insurer in the Irish market to pass on the higher than anticipated levy increase to our customers.”
Aviva said the latest increase would not apply to Aviva Health’s most popular Level 2 Hospital plans.
The company said it was developing a number of new primary care initiatives to reduce the need for more costly in-patient treatment and said the initiatives would be rolled out in the coming months.
Both the VHI, the State’s largest health insurer and Quinn Healthcare have also imposed multiple price increases since the beginning of 2011.
