THE HEALTH Insurance Authority, which regulates the health insurance industry, has said it will investigate a decision by Quinn Healthcare to get customers paying their premiums by monthly instalments to enter into 12-month loan agreements to the value of their annual premiums.
The authority said yesterday it had never heard of credit agreements in the health insurance industry before. Quinn Healthcare said the practice was common place in the motor insurance market whereby a different charge applies when somebody pays by instalments.
But RTÉ reported that a letter to customers warned that if they missed monthly payments it could, by virtue of its being a loan agreement, make obtaining credit more difficult for them in the future.