Sir, – I read your recent letter highlighting the problems with private health insurance in Ireland with interest (Letters, September 28th).
The author very rightly talks about the huge costs and the complexity of the Irish private health system. The Irish Times recently quoted a GP who noted that even he found the “private health insurance market increasingly complex and difficult to navigate. It is wholly unrealistic to expect [a] patient without specialist knowledge to understand [it]”.
This complexity is historically new. Private health insurance went from about five plans in the 1990s to about 350 plans today. What this means is that you could understand private health insurance in the 1990s – you cannot today.
The writer also notes that “health insurance is not a luxury, it is essential for anyone who want timely access to care”. This is true, and one of the reasons why the Irish health system is unethical and unfair. It is unfair to the people who cannot afford to pay to skip waiting lists for medical care.
However, private healthcare is also unfair even to the people who pay for it. Everyone in Ireland pays for healthcare through taxation. People who pay for private healthcare then pay for access to the same types of services again, but this time through their net pay or their pensions.
What they get for this double payment is a system, as your writer correctly noted, that many of them simply do not understand, and which is increasingly out of their price range.
The genuine alternative to this, to the complexity and incredible prices, is not price controls or tax breaks for private health insurance. It is universal healthcare.
Universal healthcare means that every citizen in the State would have access to meaningful healthcare; this healthcare would be free, or very low-cost, at the point of need; there would be no waiting times; and the State would deal with all of the complexity and stress that patients and their families are currently faced with when navigating private healthcare.
The State has committed to bringing universal healthcare in. Obviously progress towards universal healthcare is stalling, probably due to a lack of will, acceptance of privatisation and just general enervation.
But if you genuinely want guaranteed healthcare that will not confuse you and will always be there for you when you need it, and not just when you can afford to pay for it, you must demand that the State fulfils the promise that it has made to you, and do so in the near-term, not in some distant future.
It costs you nothing to demand your right to universal healthcare. It will cost you €2,000 to keep quiet. – Yours, etc,
DR MYLES BALFE,
Senior lecturer in medical sociology,
University College Cork.