Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share time with Deputies Coffey and Seán Kenny.

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on this important piece of legislation. I agree with many of the sentiments expressed by the previous speaker. This issue has been affecting the people of this country for ten years.

The main object of the Bill is to ensure that in the interests of societal and inter-generational solidarity the burden of the costs of health services be shared by insured persons by providing for a subsidy between the more healthy and the less healthy, including between young and old.

We were told back in the mid-1990s, as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will recall, that with the increased competition in the health insurance market there would be increased benefits by way of reduced premia, and, of course, that was not the case. In fact, this particular measure of competition worked in the opposite direction because one or other company robbed its competitors of a particularly lucrative segment of the market notwithstanding the risk equalisation legislation already in place or the community-based rating to which we had previously adhered.

We all know that medical inflation is the most voracious of all forms of inflation. It seems to take place overnight, to go on incessantly and to have no boundaries. The previous speaker gave instances of that and I wish to mention a particular case that came to my attention, although I am aware that such cases have come to the attention of every Member of this House. A person was admitted to a public hospital for a procedure and had an overnight stay there, for which he received a bill of almost €10,000. When queried, the hospital authorities apologised and said they thought he had been involved in a road traffic accident. Where does that leave us? I have spent a lot of time in recent years trying to get information on where health insurance moneys go, how the market is regulated and who is benefiting most from it, but I have found it difficult to get that information.

There are countless people all over this country who have opted out of private health insurance because they can no longer afford it. As the previous speaker said, that is not good for society because it means that more people are going to be thrust upon the public health service and the taxpayer will have to pay to a greater extent. I do not know why medical inflation is happening because in the current economic climate it is incumbent on everybody in the health sector to recognise that we cannot afford inflation of that order. It is not acceptable. Unless something is done we will eventually have no private health insurance at all because it will not be economically viable. I agree with the proposal before the House and I hope it works, but legislation is only as good as its efficacy when put into practice.

I am concerned about the warnings we hear on a regular basis of further increases in health insurance premiums. This is conditioning the public to expect large increases on an annual basis. Ultimately, it means that the unfortunate person who expects to pay a premium at a certain level decides that he or she cannot afford health insurance any longer. This decision might be based on the fact that he or she is in insecure employment or is unemployed. It is a pitiful situation to be in and I ask that the Minister, in his reply, address the questions of how inflation is hitting the insurance industry, where insurance premiums are going, to what extent they are divided between public and private health providers and to what extent taxpayers and insurers are getting value for money. It appears, for example, that extraordinarily large bills are issued for some medical procedures. There seems to be no limit on some charges and no scrutiny of whether they are merited.

The presumption is that those in a particular age group are the culprits, and I am in that particular age group. Before I alarm the House too much, I wish to point out-----

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