Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would have loved to have tabled the amendment the Minister of State has suggested. However, the rules of this House do not allow me to do that and, like Deputy Ó Caoláin, my amendments would be ruled out of order. I am glad the Minister of State at least accepts what the intention of my amendment is, which is not to differentiate between public and private beds, but to get rid of what I believe is an ineffective system.

It writes into law something with which every Member of this House fundamentally disagrees, the use of a hospital bed to distribute funds for risk equalisation. There should not be any incentive whatsoever. The Minister of State will argue that this small sum of money is not an incentive but we are writing it into statute law and it is wrong. I have had no indication from the Minister of State or the Minister that any progress has been made on this issue in the past 12 months.

The Minister of State is right that the public hospital system cannot collate that information but it is available to the health insurers. The frustrating aspect of this is that in January and February older people will be left to ask whether they can continue to keep their health insurance. Will they have to reduce their level of cover because there is no effective system to distribute the risk equalisation fund? If we had a more effective distribution system the sickest people would get those additional resources but healthy people would not. That would reduce the overall cost of insurance across the board and put more downward pressure on its cost rather than pricing it out of the market for people who have paid in for years, who are healthy and yet are being forced out of the system because we have not come up with the data systems and ways of capturing that data in our health system.

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