Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

Until there is some change we have to accept that there is a recognition at European level that health insurance is not like buying a bag of potatoes in a supermarket. Health insurance provides certain safeguards. The provision of health care is treated differently from viewing it in a crude, simplistic way, an approach that comes from the Progressive Democrats whereby everything must be seen in terms of pure competition. They view health care as another commodity. It does not matter to them what we are buying and selling here, what matters is that everybody can get into the market and sell and buy as cheaply as possible. However, health insurance has been recognised for decades by the European Union and other European countries as a central part of health care provision. I would like everybody in this country to have the protection of health insurance because if one can afford to buy health insurance, one is in a much better position to access health care. The system responds and is incentivised to look after subscribers. There are strong arguments to extending health insurance to everybody and enabling people to have the kind of care that currently only private patients are able to access when they need it. There is strong arguments for health insurance as a social measure of health care provision and that is recognised at EU level. If we simply see provision in this regard as buying and selling commodities on the market, the Minister is not getting the message. If she applies rules that do not accept that community rating is a distortion, that risk equalisation is a balancing measure——

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