Health Insurance Is it possible to cancel health insurance before end of term and switch to different provider?

My sister will be retiring from her Public Service job later this year and she's starting to look at the cost of things when she retires. Health Insurance is important to her and she wants to maintain this. She and her husband currently have VHI OnePlan Extra and she's paying €3165 per year. She renewed this in January.

Simplicity from Laya gets mentioned a lot in different threads so I went to the Laya site and got a quote. This came in at €204.33 per month for the two of them - €2295.72 for the year. I got a quote from the VHI site for OnePlan Extra and this came in at €245.96 - €2951.60 for the year. This figure is lower than the €3165 my sister is currently paying, so VHI must have reduced the price of this plan since she renewed.

Can she cancel her VHI policy later this year and switch to Laya or does she need to wait until January to switch? If she can switch mid-year, is Simplicity still the best alternative for her?

Thanks!

Hi, I think there could be a cancellation fees. https://www.hia.ie/consumer-information/switching-health-insurance-plan-provider
On the HIA website you can also enter the plans you are interested in and do comparisons side by side.

Thanks, Sadie.

Yep, I'm aware of the side-by-side comparison on the HIA website. I used this a lot last year when I was renewing my own policy. On a few occasions though I noticed some differences between the policy price HIA displayed and what the actual provider listed. I suppose it's close to impossible for a third-party website to have the correct price 100% of the time though. Comparing VHI OnePlan Extra and Laya Simplicity - [broken link removed] -, the cost for OnePlan Extra matches what VHI is displaying (€1475.80 per adult) but the Laya Simplicity is different. HIA is displaying €1190.26 per adult but the Laya website is showing €1144.61 per adult.

It looks like there would be a penalty involved if my sister was to cancel mid-year.
"Vhi does not allow mid-term cancellations without penalty. If you stop paying your premium mid-term and have had no claims, they will charge you a penalty for breach of contract. This is equal to the health insurance levy, per person, on a pro-rata basis, for the remaining period left on the policy plus a €50 administration fee per policy. Payment of this penalty does not affect your rights to take out a policy with another insurer.

If you have had claims in this policy year, Vhi will charge the full year’s premium."

I had a look at the health insurance levy PDF that they linked to, but I found it hard to figure out exactly what the penalty might be.

It might be simpler, though not necessarily cheaper, to leave the switching until her policy comes up for renewal.