THE INTRODUCTION of universal health insurance in the State could dramatically increase healthcare costs and result in patients having to wait days to see their family doctor, a conference was told yesterday.
The annual meeting of the Irish Medical Organisation in Killarney heard three presentations from people living in the Netherlands about the Dutch system of universal healthcare – elements of which are being copied by the Government here – who said “cracks” were already beginning to appear in their system which was introduced in 2006.
Dr Henk Van Der Velden, a health policy analyst in the Netherlands, said the new system was introduced not because the Netherlands had a two-tier system of delivering healthcare but because it had a two-tier system of health insurance. The new system, he said, combined with a “money follows the patient” system had tackled waiting lists but was very expensive.
Healthcare costs doubled in the past 10 years in the Netherlands which was a big problem now for the government.
He said that for the first few years, insurance companies offered good deals to attract customers, running down their reserves, but in the end they had financial problems and a number of mergers ensued. There were now five main insurers in the market, which he believed was the minimum required to make the system work, and this year they raised their premiums by about €100 or 10 per cent.
He added that insurers were now dropping cover for services such as physiotherapy from their policies. If in the end consumers have to buy more and more of these services by way of top-ups on their insurance policies, it could result in a two-tier healthcare system being created in the Netherlands which up to now has had a very equitable system, he said.
Dr Wim Heres, a Dutch GP, said family doctors in the Netherlands earn about €40 per hour after tax and only have about 10 minutes to see patients because they have so many patients on their books. The average practice has about 2,300 patients. Having just 10 minutes to see patients was a European low and something to be “ashamed” of, he said.
Lisa Matassa, an Irish woman living in the Netherlands with her husband and two children, said she had been paying €550 a year for her health insurance in Ireland before she left in 2008 and her cover was now costing her €1,454 in the Netherlands where it is mandatory to take out insurance. This is a policy covering her alone as her children go free, she added.