POLITICAL REACTION:IT IS not clear whether a legal solution can be found to the problems arising from the Supreme Court decision to strike down the risk equalisation scheme in the health insurance market, Minister for Health Mary Harney said yesterday.
She said the Government would have to take legal and official advice and give consideration to the "major decision" by the court. This would take time.
It was important that health insurance subscriptions remained affordable for older and sicker people, and the only way that this could be achieved was through risk equalisation, she said. "I want to explore every possible way of maintaining that."
One thing she wanted to avoid was older people having to pay more in future. It would not be possible within a couple of weeks to bring forward policy solutions to the striking down of the risk equalisation scheme. "I am not certain at this point that there is a quick legal fix and I want to make that clear. If there were I would be advocating a recall of the Dáil to deal with that," she said.
Fine Gael health spokesman James Reilly claimed that the Supreme Court decision reflected a serious blunder on the part of Ms Harney, while the Labour spokeswoman Jan O'Sullivan warned that the decision could lead to a massive rise in VHI premiums.
Dr Reilly said the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court to strike down the risk equalisation scheme had come about as a result of bungling by the Minister and her department.
"The private health insurance market depends on striking a balance between the issues of community rating, risk equalisation and competition. It is clear that the Health Minister massively bungled this balance," said Dr Reilly.
He accused the Minister of driving competition out of the Irish market by making it unviable for Bupa to remain here.
Ms O'Sullivan said the Supreme Court decision would have potentially very serious consequences for health policy and could lead to a significant rise in premium payments for VHI members. "We have not yet had an opportunity to study the detail of the judgment, but risk equalisation is a well established feature of the health insurance market throughout Europe and the principle has been upheld by the European Court of First Instance. It underpins community rating so that older people who are more likely to need healthcare do not have to pay much higher rates than younger, healthier people," she said.