James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In fairness, I had to have it explained to me too. The hospital bed utilisation charge, which was €75 but has now been reduced to €60, will be paid back by the risk equalisation fund to the insurers for patients who are in a bed. This is about helping us know the health status of insured people. In other words, the insurers know who has been in hospital and in a hospital bed, but we have no way of knowing. By paying this small discount back to the insurers, we have an understanding of which of the insurers' clients are high or low users. This gives us some indication of their health status. To make it simple, if insurers have 40,000 clients and we see that only 3,000 of these have availed of a bed and we have paid the hospital bed utilisation charge, we know the rest of the 40,000 clients never ended up in a hospital bed. The charge gives us more information on the health status of people insured privately. That is information that is not available to us otherwise. This system is not ideal, but it is one way of gaining knowledge of people's health usage and status. This is not a cost to insurers, but is a return to them.