John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics, NCPE, as the Minister is aware, issued a recommendation on certain cancer drugs as being cost non-effective. The Minister wisely and humanely, following other consultations, overrode that decision and made one drug in particular available. I raise the question that Aviva private health insurance is using the data from the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics to justify its decision not to pay for the drug, which means that patients who have paid for their health insurance are being rejected for this drug and are then falling back as an extra expense burden on the public hospital system. That is iniquitous. Parenthetically, Aviva pays for homoeopathy - I would like to know if it has ever done a health cost effective analysis for homoeopathy - which speaks to the sincerity of this organisation. I urge people who have Aviva insurance to consider joining another company, and if they are thinking of taking up insurance-----