Half crocked
Bertie Ahern plays fast and loose with the facts:
“What we were being asked by Bupa - and let’s not put a tooth in this - was that people who are all well and healthy can pay cheap insurance while the old people then get screwed. I am not going to do that while they get greater profits,” he said. “I’ll look after the people who need looking after. If insurance is all about going out and getting a 100 people who are unlikely to get sick for the next 10 years so they make greater profits, that’s great, that’s marvellous.
“And I am meant to be impressed by that argument? And then you get 100 people who are like myself and half-crocked and we have to pay far more for it. That’s fair? Market forces? Competition? Who are they codding,” said the Taoiseach.
Am I really supposed to take this clown seriously as leader of the country when he comes out with rubbish like this? Show me the evidence that BUPA were cherry picking the younger customers. What has the VHI done with all the money it has made out of its current older customer base when they were young, healthy, and claim free? Why don’t the VHI have to comply with capital adequacy requirements? Who’s rubbing their hands with glee in expectation of the privatisation of the VHI that’s coming down the line?
Half-crocked is right. And what does he mean by the phrase “let’s not put a tooth in this”? Is he by any chance referring to the lack of regulation of the VHI?
Ann Fitzgerald of the National Consumer Agency says:
“It is now critically important that the Minister for Health addresses, as a matter of urgency, the dominant position of the VHI in the Irish market. Dominant players are not in consumers’ interests; we have seen that in various sectors of the economy. It is not good enough to allow VHI a further six years - until 2012 - to meet the solvency requirements which other health insurers must meet. To do so would strengthen and copperfasten the dominant position of the VHI,” she said.
“Current VHI advantages include the freedom not to comply with capital adequacy requirements which other insurers are required to do. Other advantages which would accrue to VHI over that six year period would include freedom to develop new products and markets without regulatory oversight and without compliance with the regulatory requirements which apply to other insurers.
“Radical proposals are needed to address this dominance question now. Otherwise, consumers will lose out and the market will continue to be unattractive to new entrants”
Mark Waters marked time at 4:42 pm on December 16th, 2006 .
I was listening to a little history lesson on the VHI the other day. Apparently, at some point in the 80s the VHI had a tidy little sum set aside for their aging client base and it was taken and used by the government to meet other demands.
When I read what Bertie had said the other day I thought it was possibly the most outrageous load of garbage he’s uttered since he became Taoiseach. He’s talking out of his hat and he knows it.
What this whole argument boils down to is that BUPA didn’t make enough of an effort to convince old people to abandon the VHI for BUPA. I’m waiting for the government to force ESAT/BT out of the market for not making enough of an effort to convince old people to abandon Eircom. The government is punishing BUPA and BUPA’s customers for the fact that there was no proper health insurance market in Ireland until the mid-1990s. This problem - if it is that severe for VHI - should be solved by the taxpayer, not BUPA and their clients.