Wow, 300 a month, that's 3,600 a year. If you just put that money aside into an emergency fund, you would have 36k over 10 years. Could you ever possibly imagine paying 36k on medical costs in a decade, considering you actually would be able to get into the public system if anything really serious ever came up, and without insurance, you will only need to pay a fee of €80 a night for overnight stays and inpatient day cases in public hospitals, up to a maximum amount €800 that can be charged over a 12 month period.
What exactly are you paying for really with health insurance, it's really only access to consultants and tests and non-urgent procedures, all of which you will have more than enough in your fund for should you ever need.
Genuinely disgraceful that people feel the need to pay nearly 4k a year extra for healthcare that you have already paid to access. It's really a bad place for families to be when you aren't entitled to a medical card but can't afford health insurance.
Inpatient fees are being abolished this month and along with it the public only health insurance plans are being taken off the market.
Private health insurance is really for private hospitals. You don't have to use it for public hospitals, that was brought in to try fund the public system some more through insurance, but it's completely optional.
It does sound like a large amount but the key thing is that medical care, that is fast to access and in high quality facilities, is very expensive to provide. 36k over 4 people over 10 years isn't a lot in medical terms. Of course it all depends on what happens. If you went to the GP a handful of times in 10 years you could be annoyed. But if you claimed once for a serious illness you might be happy. 1 night in a shared room costs around €800 per night. A single scan costs €250-600. A single visit to a consultant costs €220-350 first time, and €170-250 for subsequent visits. A single nerve block injection costs around €1000. A colonoscopy costs around €1000. Surgery costs €3000-15000. A month of cancer medication for one person costs the state an average of €10000.
The government tried costing universal health insurance when they promised it politically back in 2011. They abandoned the idea a few years later due to funding issues. Tax intake alone is not enough. Universal health Insurance on top wouldn't be enough, without still having significant out of pocket costs for the individual, or very high premiums or tax to get around this. To get an idea of the costs you can look at the paper done on universal health insurance at the following link:
In other words it costs a lot of money to provide such level of care and our public system is underfunded (and possibly inefficient) in this regard. How does our public system handle this? By simply delaying access to care, through months or years of waiting lists. I would caution that the definition of an urgent case is very narrow in the public system. The A&E route will make sure you're not in an immediate risk of death and then send you on your way fairly fast. All follow up care then begins in waiting lists. If you are in severe pain, or are having your quality of life severely affected by your condition, you'll still have to endure the wait. It may be urgent to you but not to the system. Even if they think you might have a cancer risk necessitating a dermatology check up or a colonoscopy you will still have to wait on a list to get diagnosed. I was told by my local hospital an urgent dermatology appointment (possible skin cancer falls into this category) wait time was 1 year.
It's not fair but it's a difficult problem to solve. The American system tries to solve the problem of fast and modern care through insurance and this has resulted in very high premiums due to the huge costs involved. The fully universal system of the NHS is being plagued by ever growing waiting lists and inequality of waiting times in what's known as post code lotteries. The German system of government regulated public health insurance has very high taxes to fund this.
In my opinion some elements of the private health insurance system in Ireland are well designed. For example community rating, where everyone pays the same for the same plan, regardless of claims history. Contrary to a lot of people's expectations, the VHI is a not for profit company. They compete directly with for profit companies, Laya and Irish Life. This is a unique combination, where the private companies drive VHI to keep innovating and the not for profit element of VHI keeps the other companies price competitive.
Ultimately the value of the money is subjective. 36k over 10 years might seem a lot (and it is) but a lot of people will be shocked when they see how much interest their mortgage is costing them. A 350k house at a relatively low interest rate (4-5%) over 35 years will cost an additional 300-350k in interest alone.
Apologies for going a bit off topic on this thread.
