An Ôold crockÕ cast adrift on the health insurance market

Date Published: {J}

Now I think I know how it feels to be one of those young drivers with the souped-up banger traipsing from place to place looking for car insurance.

You see, I’m at the other end of the age scale . . . and in my case, it looks like I’ll be the one traipsing like an ‘ould crock’ looking for reasonably-priced private health insurance.

Years ago, I never thought that, in my 60s, I’d be in the situation where this body of mine – with one careful owner and the bonnet rarely lifted – would be singled out by the VHI, who have blithely taken my premium payments over the many decades when I had damn all claims.

Naturally, the VHI haven’t said they won’t insure me. But, being careful that I might be a claimant, some years ago – and at their persuasion– I joined the ranks of those in ‘Plan B’ and now discover that they are threatening me with a 45% increase in the premium.

What has happened, of course, is that I have entered the potentially very expensive age for health insurance. During all those healthy years, they took my dosh and that for my kids . . . but now I am in the same sort of risk category as the 20 years old driver, and they want rid of me.

Of course, the only reason I joined the VHI at all – and enrolled all of my four children aeons ago – was that I wanted to be sure that, if something went wrong, we would be able to get a service.

Like tens of thousands of others, I was just a little suspicious of what is termed ‘the public health system’. I also paid for this with countless years of health contributions and PRSI, and, in theory, I was entitled to a health service.

For instance, under privileges granted to me by Charlie Haughey, I was entitled, like everyone else, to a free bed and treatment in a public ward. Only problem was that I saw the patients on trolleys and I knew the stories were legend about waiting lists for anything elective or classed as non-urgent.

In other words, like tens of thousands of others I took out private health insurance because those waiting lists had undermined my confidence in the public system. I took out the ‘each way bet’ of being ‘in’ the VHI and it looked to me that Plan B was the optimum that I could afford and which would give me a service if I needed it.

I have to say that they were efficient and paid up promptly and unquestioningly for any claim I had . . . but now that I am a much more expensive risk, they want to jack-up my premium by maybe €1,000 per annum in a move which they admit is unfair and unjust (their words).

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.