Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The explanatory and financial memorandum on this Bill states:

The Health Insurance Acts 1994 to 2019 provide for a Risk Equalisation Scheme for the health insurance market since 1 January 2013. Under the Scheme, insurers receive risk equalisation credits to compensate for the additional cost of insuring older and less healthy members.

Is that not a sad and depressing statement? I believe it is. Nobody on the opposite side of the House will believe it but that is the case. It is the financialisation of human lives and the health insurance market, so-called. We are all commodities in this marketplace called neoliberalism.

The genesis of this Bill is to amend the 1994 Health Insurance Act and the Stamp Duties Consolidation Act 1999. The risk equalisation scheme was approved as state aid for the period 2016 to 2020 and this Bill is seeking to extend that scheme for a further 15 months.

I have been studying the instances and prevalence of Covid-19 in Donegal and areas around Donegal and our neighbouring counties in the North. The areas with the highest levels of deprivation have been most impacted. The higher levels of Covid can almost be mapped completely to the less affluent areas. Why? It is because an unequal society causes more people to become ill and die.

The Bill digest states that a study in early 2020 by the Health Information Authority, HIA, found that:

Those with PHI [private health insurance] are more likely to be from the more affluent white collar workers/professional cohort ... whilst those from more manual professions or reliant on state benefits are significantly less likely to have cover.

[...]

This finding on the social divide is consistent with previous studies commissioned by the HIA.

The programme for Government, Our Shared Future, committed to accelerating the implementation of Sláintecare, which, as I have said, is very welcome. However, because of Fine Gaelness and Fianna Fáilness, as it were, the Government explicitly states its support for private healthcare while it talks about supporting Sláintecare also. It states that it would retain access to private health services, ensuring choice for those accessing healthcare. The irony is never lost on the Minister of State. The only people who have a choice are those who have the means to afford private healthcare. He should have spoken about ensuring choice for those who could afford it. That would have been a truer statement to make in this regard.

We facilitate a private health system - this Bill is facilitating it - and we will pay €350 million out of State funds to support wealthy people and people who can afford to have private health insurance and to fill up our hospitals so that people who cannot afford it cannot get into them. That is crazy. If the Minister of State had written this as a comedy, people would say it could not be true, but that is what we are doing. We are facilitating that so that wealthy people can access the health services over people who cannot afford them who are more likely to be sick and will actually cost the State more in the long run because they cannot afford private health insurance. That is what the Minister of State and the Government is facilitating and what every Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Government in this State has facilitated along the way.

Members spoke earlier about elderly people who have private health insurance and cannot get access to healthcare, yet those same elderly people have a medical card and could get their care free of charge. I meet people all the time in my constituency and they talk about private health insurance. They do not know that there is no charge for hospital care other than the charge for the bed, which is maximised at €350 or €360. They believe that if they need an operation they have to pay the cost of that. The Government facilitates that because it pushes people into private healthcare to make sure they get it. People are putting themselves at risk by paying for it. I tell them, and rightly so, that they would be better off saving their money in the credit union and if they feel they need to buy a service such as a CAT scan or whatever, they can get a loan from the credit union to pay for it and they will still have their savings in the credit union. They would be far better off than paying for the private health insurance we have in this State. That would make far more sense for individuals throughout the country because this is an absolute disgrace. Ministers whose job it is to represent the people of this State should be embarrassed to stand up and push this along.

The Minister of State will say that the purpose of this legislation is to equalise the system and make it more fair, but it should not have to be made more fair. The bottom line is that this has been put into the Bill because the Government has broken the system. It is to facilitate wealthy people who can afford it.

I am totally opposed to this legislation. I have opposed it all the way. I will not call a vote on it but I am totally opposed to what the Minister of State is doing in regard to it because it is wrong, but he will continue to do what he is doing, which is fair enough.

We can then actually make the changes that would make healthcare in the State reflect the people who live here.

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