Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. In the past five years more than €3 billion has been taken from the health budget. When people talk about cost, they seem to assume that cutting funding from health care also means cutting services, but that is not the case. It is about making it more cost effective. We have saved money as a result of being proactive in getting value for money and we need to go down that line. The private health care sector must also become cost effective and I am not sure if that message has been taken on board by the private health care sector, particularly as it relates to health insurers which are paying out for private health care.

Senator Barrett spoke about cost competitiveness and the provision of medical insurance for older people. There is no proactive effort by the VHI's competitors to go after that market, which is why we have had to introduce amending legislation to bring balance regarding those competitors which are going after a longer-term market and targeting the younger age group. If the other three companies are interested in the older age group, we certainly have not seen any evidence of it and I do not believe we will see any such evidence in the immediate future. It is unfortunate that the insurance companies are not making enough effort to reduce costs in the private sector. That is how cost effectiveness from an insurance point of view can be introduced and we need to be more proactive in that regard.

The Bill deals with a number of issues in order to ensure fairness in the market when it comes to the cost of insurance.