CUSTOMERS OF Quinn Healthcare face another hike in premiums after the insurer yesterday announced its second price rise in less than two months.
Its latest increase will see most of its customers hit with premium increases of 6 per cent from as early as the beginning of March. The move will add around €150 to the annual cost of an average policy for a family of two adults and two children. An adult will have to pay an extra €50 more for an average policy.
The latest price increase from the State’s second-largest insurer comes on the back of two sets of price hikes it announced last year.
In April, Quinn, which has around 400,000 subscribers, rolled out average price hikes of 6 per cent on all its policies. At the end of November it said the cost of its premiums would increase by an average of 12 per cent, with some policies going up in price by in excess of 20 per cent. All the increases took effect from the beginning of January.
The company blamed its latest price changes on the Government’s “repeated increases” to the health insurance levy and changes to the tax relief system covering 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.
Earlier this month, Minister for Health James Reilly said the levy would have to go up from €205 to €285 for an adult and from €66 to €95 for a child. He said the move would make insurance more affordable for older people and said the increases had been designed to result in no overall increase of premiums paid in the market. The VHI, with more than 1.3 million subscribers, said at the time it would not pass on the increase, while Aviva said it would also absorb the increases.
Quinn Healthcare has decided to pass on the increases almost immediately. “The dramatic changes to the health levy and rate of age-related tax relief were not anticipated and while keeping costs as low as possible for our customers, we are not in a position to fully absorb such significant increases,” the company’s managing director Dónal Clancy said.
He expressed concern that the levy hikes would see “more people who can afford it least will be forced into a public health system which is already buckling under intense pressure”.
