Madam, – The large increases in the cost of private health insurance suggest that this method of paying for healthcare will not be viable for much longer. Considering the trend towards less expensive day case surgery and the relative youth of the Irish population, it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that wholesale profiteering must be behind the increases.
It hardly a surprise that that great battle cry of the neo-liberal movement, “competition in the market place”, has failed to make private medical insurance more affordable.
Paradoxically, the arrival of the for-profit insurers and of dozens of for-profit private hospitals has driven up the cost.
When one considers that the cost of GP visits, prescription drugs and specialist consultations are not usually covered, private health insurance represents extraordinarily bad value for money. In reality, it provides little more than an access advantage to a number of private hospitals, which themselves are subject to very little regulation and many of which provide a very limited range of medical services.
The private health insurance industry needs to be dismantled and replaced by the type of efficient system that works in the interest of patients, as in Canada, where administrative costs are minimal and where patients are not routinely tormented by insurers when they make a claim.
Finally, the private hospital sector needs to be subjected to the same scrutiny, governance and regulation that exists in the public sector, in order to protect the public from exploitative profit-maximising techniques, including over-treatment and over-investigation.– Yours, etc,