Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I pay tribute to Senator Quinn for bringing this important legislation before the House which, I hope, will lead to an important debate on this issue. Fianna Fáil welcomes this Bill as an important contribution to the debate on addressing what is now a serious crisis in health insurance. Health insurance is seen by some people as a luxury for the well-off but the reality is that almost half the population has health insurance and probably half the population has medical cards. Despite the worrying drop in health insurance take-up, many people still have health insurance and pay for it.

We support letting this Bill go to Committee Stage but I have some concerns about what Senator Quinn proposes. There is no doubt there is a crisis, not only in this market but in terms of health care for families throughout the country. An average of 4,000 customers left the private health insurance market every month in the year to March of this year. Approximately 1,600 customers per week left in the first three months of this year. That is a serious crisis which is not being tackled by the Government. Before the general election, Fine Gael, in particular, placed great store on its fair care proposal. It is unfortunate to have to say to the Minister that the reality is nothing much has happened. I would say the Minister has had very little support from his colleagues, either in his own party or in the Labour Party, for this proposal. The Minister gave himself ten years to do this at a time when the HSE itself was only six years old. At the time, I thought it was a bit rich that even though the HSE was relatively young, Fine Gael was giving itself a longer period of time to implement universal health insurance. That has not happened and, in the meantime, people are getting out of the habit of paying health insurance. It is crucially important that Senator Quinn has brought this Bill forward to get the debate going on what we are actually doing in regard to health insurance.

The Bill seeks to normalise the regulatory position of the VHI by requiring it to meet solvency requirements. That is obviously required under a legal judgment and must happen at some point. It provides for the transfer of responsibility for management of the State's ownership of the VHI to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. We certainly have no difficulty with that.

The Bill provides for the dissolution of the Health Insurance Authority and the transfer of its regulatory functions to the Central Bank of Ireland. We are not as enthusiastic about that. I am not sure that would be a welcome development and that it is entirely appropriate to treat health insurance simply as a financial product. It is way more than that and is about people's health and lives. I am not sure the Central Bank of Ireland has the expertise to regulate these bodies simply as financial organisations.

We have a consumer problem in health insurance. The Minister mentioned the hundreds of policies available and the confusion that causes. We need to bring in what Obamacare did and divide the policies into gold, silver and bronze and have a minimum policy. Every policy would be classified in one of the categories, which is what Obamacare did. It would be very useful as one would know what type of policy one was getting. It is hugely confusing for people currently. Companies should be able to offer whatever products they want and I certainly would not stop them offering all these products but there are ways around it and of classifying these products and how they good are.

I am not aware, although I could stand corrected, of any regulation which stipulates what type of cut-off payments or what type of co-payments are legally allowed to be required, what type of services can be offered and whether one can force someone to pay thousands of euro even though he or she has paid health insurance. Much of that must be dealt with better through legislation and regulation. The Health Insurance Authority's website is certainly very helpful but that is not the answer. We need massive simplification by simply labelling the policies. We also need to know what should be the minimum available on these policies. I do not know whether that exists in law. If it does, it certainly has not been looked at for quite some time.

To cut costs, insurance companies are offering fewer services and are removing hospitals in which people may want to be treated. The Government is doing little about that. Regulation and a legislative framework in respect of that need to be drawn up urgently by the Health Insurance Authority because these policies are very expensive and can be hugely necessary at certain times in people's lives.

I support the fact Senator Quinn has brought forward this Bill. We certainly support its passing Second Stage. This is an important debate, but there are much wider issues with health insurance in this country in terms of consumer protection and consumer information. The Health Insurance Authority's website, although excellent, is not the answer. We need a much simpler labelling solution for policies. Our health spokesman, Senator MacSharry, is absent because, I have been told, there is a meeting of the banking inquiry currently. I suspect this will happen regularly in the House over the next year or more.