Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 28 November 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children

Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2013: Discussion

10:40 am

Mr. Brian Dunne:

It is 92% of all adults. When one looks at the potential impact, as the Chairman will have seen from his constituents, the potential impact on individual customers with some of the larger plans is effectively a multiple of that. We have said €100 on average but the reality is there are people who are getting bills for much more than that. As Mr. Armstrong noted, we negotiate with private hospitals. I do not know what are the VHI or Laya Healthcare rates for private hospitals but we negotiate and do a normal procurement process. Again, we are getting better at that every year by introducing more checks and controls on that. That is something on which we are very focused because we know the impact of all the changes in the market and, therefore, we are trying to keep costs down. We are doing many other things to keep costs down as well.