Sir, - In today’s Irish Times, Cantillon quotes a new report from the Health Insurance Authority (“Switching your health insurance is also good for your wallet”, Business, March 24th). The report highlights “the complexity of the market and the challenges consumers face in comparing plans” as a key reason for why people are reluctant to switch health insurance plans.
Year in and year out, we are berated for reluctance to switch and, equally repetitively, complexity is identified as a key barrier. This could be solved overnight by regulatory standardisation on, say, seven plans from A to G, with insurers quoting accordingly. This would give consumers all the choice and clarity they need to optimise their needs.
One suspects befuddlement of the poor consumer is actually a goal – akin to plans for mobile phones and TV contracts. A strong ministerial hand could fix this overnight. – Yours, etc,
JOHN GRIFFIN,
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Kells,
Co Meath.
‘Discounts’ feel like smoke and mirrors
Sir, – The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission has mandated that petrol and diesel retailers must display their prices clearly as unit prices per litre, inclusive of VAT. It would be welcome if the same legislation were applied to gas, electricity and telecoms suppliers.
Instead, consumers are faced with a range of prices that are then reduced by a bewildering array of “discounts”, which are subsequently converted into a meaningless “estimated annual bill”.
The size of these discounts is often determined by how much you are willing to haggle. If it is standard practice to apply these discounts to all customers, then suppliers should be required to display the discounted prices and, at the very least, provide a clear explanation of how the discounts are calculated and how they can be availed of. – Yours, etc,
LIONEL BARKER,
Sandymount,
Dublin.
