Frank Feighan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2012. Risk equalisation is an issue with which I am quite familiar as I spoke about it many years ago in the Seanad. It was one of the few issues on which we in the then Opposition agreed with the then Government. When it was first debated, it was in the heady days of open markets and value for money. I believed then risk equalisation was a fundamental cornerstone in ensuring fairness in health insurance.

I am a member of the VHI along with my mother. We find with the costs going up, it is getting more expensive and, like everyone else, we have had to check the various plans. We need to examine the health insurance system because many people are getting out of it due to the state of the economy. In turn, this is placing a significant burden on the health system. Over the years, we have thrown billions of euro at the health system but never checked the large wastes of money in it. A lot has been done in the past three years to address this but a lot more still needs to be done. When €1.7 billion is taken out of the health budget, it is a tribute to the front-line staff and those who run it that it is functioning pretty well although there still is a need for improvements.

There is much negative publicity about Roscommon County Hospital which is factually incorrect. Nearly two years on from when it was downgraded, the hospital is busier now. Before one had to wait three to six months for a procedure in Galway and Dublin while now it can be done in Roscommon. There was a meeting yesterday with the design team for Roscommon hospital which announced a €3 million endoscopy project to be located on the hospital site which will bring patients from far and near. When I hear people claim Roscommon hospital is closed, I ask them to do me a favour and call into the hospital to see for themselves what is happening there. In three years’ time, more procedures will be carried out in the hospital than there were in 2009. Sometimes we should shout from the rooftops the magnificent work being done in the hospital and across the health service. Now, we have the Galway University-Roscommon hospital group for which staff from consultants to nurses will be appointed and will be able to move around the various locations. This has happened not because the Minister ordered it but because the management and staff on the ground have worked together to achieve better efficiencies.

No matter how much money is put into health insurance, unless we tackle gross inefficiencies in the health system, then insurance will continue to become more expensive. We need to examine the provision of home-care packages and primary care centres. Primary care centres should become a cornerstone of our health system. Why do people need to clog up an accident and emergency department with routine ailments when they could be attended to in a primary care centre? The group hospitals idea is excellent. The demise of the Health Service Executive is the right approach because we need to be the masters of our own health system’s destiny to ensure whatever budgets are set for a hospital are spent in it.

Risk equalisation protects the healthy and the less healthy. I commend the Bill to the House.

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