Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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160. To ask the Minister for Health the extent to which his Department continues to monitor the costs of private health insurance; if community rating processes are being observed by all insurers, without exception; if indications to the contrary have been observed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15142/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Health Insurance Authority is a statutory regulator of the private health insurance market. In exercise of its functions, the independent regulator monitors the health insurance market including compliance by the health insurers with the legislative rules and regulations governing the market, particularly in relation to community rating. In doing so, the Authority ensures that the market is regulated appropriately and that insurers are discouraged from engaging in practices, or offering health insurance contracts, which undermine community rating or the principal objective of the Health Insurance Acts.

With regard to the specific issue of costs, I introduced a suite of measures to address rising health insurance premiums and stabilise the private health insurance market in the interests of consumers. These include a reduction in the Risk Equalisation Stamp Duty Levy, special lower premiums for young adults, the introduction of Lifetime Community Rating, and a reduction in the Health Insurance Authority Levy. The package also includes key recommendations set out in the two Pat McLoughlin reports on Private Health Insurance costs, and builds on Budget 2015 which included a freeze on hospital bed charges and no decrease in the relievable amount on health insurance premiums for tax relief purposes.

Taken together, these measures are intended to create a sustainable market where health insurance is as affordable for as many people as possible and to create the best possible environment within which more people, particularly young people, will want to obtain and retain private health insurance, thereby reducing the necessity for premium inflation across the market.