A couple of years ago we had also been looking at where we could cut back, we had two young healthy kids and with unpaid leave we were trying to make things stretch.
At the time we opted to keep cover as my husband was getting some of his covered by work and I was raised in a family that always had HI. Now we have three kids (8,6,1.5)
Both of my older kids have had minor day procedures in Temple Street, in both cases as private patients. The eldest was referred for a medically need circumcision and the next for a tonsillectomy. In the boy's case the public appointment to meet the consultant and decide on surgery would have been 6 months after he had the operation privately.
In the girls tonsils case it would have been at least 6 months if not longer as even private we got bumped from the list.
The youngest is looking like she will also need a minor operation in the comnig year and may also be following big sis with tonsil problems.
Thankfully none of the kids are unwell as such, these are just minor, routine childrens issues, but if we had taken them off the policy three years ago as we had been considering......
As huskerdu mentions its the access to service rather then the level of service.
Hopefully we will not be making use of HI again for operations, but the policy we have does gives us something back for day to day expenses, so we figure in the long run its worth it.