Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will return to a point I raised earlier about competition among health care providers as opposed to health care insurers. If one restricts the number of health care providers, one will automatically keep up the level of costs they can charge. I make no apologies for filing a complaint with the Competition Authority on this matter because I certainly thought the case was anti-competitive. The number of available private beds in a particular area was being restricted because of a decision by the insurers. The issue of day care procedures is constantly changing and I am not sure if insurers are reacting fast enough. I know of procedures where insurance cover will be provided if the person is admitted to hospital but will not be provided for the medical practitioner if it is done as a day care procedure. That needs to be constantly reviewed because it seems to change at a very fast rate but I am not sure if insurers are responding quickly enough.

I am not sure how insurers are approaching the admission of a patient with private insurance into a public hospital. Consultants are being asked to sign forms but at what stage is the person treated as a private patient? Is it when he or she is admitted or must the consultant sign off on the patient before he or she is treated as a private patient? For example, what happens if a senior registrar, as is often the case, carries out a very simple procedure and the person is admitted to the hospital for a day or two? In these cases, the consultant is quite happy to have the senior registrar look after that patient but the question is whether the HSE bills the insurance company and then asks the consultant to make out the bills when in fact the patient has not come in under the care of the consultant.