Health insurance decision to be made in Ireland

Wed, 02 Apr 2008

Ireland has been in and out of the health insurance news for the last year, largely because of a complicated market . Despite only three private health insurance companies operating in the county, six court cases are underway.

The three – VHI, Vivas and Quinn all face legal complexity relating to the EU and Irish courts. VHI are alleged to have breached competition rules due to its dominance of the medical insurance market. Vivas, a rival health insurance company, made an official complaint.

VHI operates with a risk equalisation scheme that hampers other insurance companies in the region to the extent that BUPA pulled out of the Irish market a year ago. Sean Quinn, Irish entrepreneur, accused VHI of ‘trading illegally’ and operating without accountability.

VHI, however, are on the defensive. They were reported as commenting: "we have dealt with the issues raised by Vivas Health, and VHI believes that its whole submission should be dismissed, as it has no foundation." VHI controls 76 per cent of the Irish health insurance market.
add to favouritesnewsletterlink to this pagesend to friendpost comments

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.

Health Insurance Partners