About 1.4 million private health insurance subscribers face another rise in cost of cover from the beginning of next month.
VHI Healthcare, the largest health insurer in the country, is to raise subscriptions by an average 8 per cent from February 1st.
The increase will see the cost of its popular Plan B scheme for an adult rise by €78.99 - from €828 to €906.99.
But the cost for a family on Plan B will decrease slightly from €2,256 to €2,252.14 for two adults and two children, due to a decrease in the cost of child cover announced last year.
The company said the overall increase in prices was necessary to continue to fund its operations.
In a statement, chief executive Jimmy Tolan said the company was a not-for-profit organisation and the sole purpose of the price increase is to fund the healthcare needs of our customers.
“Our overall price increase is significantly lower than our competitors notwithstanding their market share of customers over the age of 60 is only 15 per cent and consequently their average spend in meeting the healthcare needs of their customers is only 50 per cent of VHI Healthcare's".
VHI said it expected to generate total underwriting losses of at least €80 million for 2009, based on an average spend per customer of €900, which it claimed was twice the level of its competitors.
The company said it would generate losses of more than €170 million for the year in meeting the healthcare needs of its 280,000 customers who are aged 60 and older.
A 23 per cent price increase in the average cost of VHI subscriptions came into force at the beginning of last year.
The cost of health insurance has been rising at an annual rate of about 9 per cent since 1998, but over the past year this has escalated considerably with all three providers – Quinn, Hibernian and VHI – announcing significant price rises.
Hibernian raised it prices by an average of 22 per cent last year, while Quinn announced prices hikes of about 16 per cent.
