News that the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, has sanctioned a nine per cent increase in premiums for VHI members (with effect from September) highlights once again how central healthcare has become in Irish society. It is the second increase this year, bringing the total to over 15 per cent. Although medical inflation is indeed running well ahead of other costs, poorer VHI members will be hard pressed to pay the increased premiums. This cannot but reinforce existing inequalities between the private and public tiers of the health service.
Mr Martin refused to sanction a similar increase last year and has now had to make up the difference. It will have an appreciable impact on inflation as a general election approaches. Public opinion surveys make it absolutely clear that health is of primary concern to voters. In a significant finding in the Irish Times/MRBI poll earlier this summer, three quarters of those surveyed said they would forego further tax cuts in favour of a better health service.
Thus there is merit in yesterday's criticism of the announced increase by Fine Gael's health spokesman, Mr Gay Mitchell. He described it as a cosy deal done behind closed doors and announced after the Dβil recess, in a "mockery of democratic accountability". His call for Mr Martin and the VHI to justify the increase at a meeting of the Oireachtas Health Committee is appropriate - precisely the kind of task such committees ought to undertake. It is not enough simply to assert the need for increases of this magnitude, with their widespread impact, without more detailed political justification. A record 1.52 million people are now insured with the company, some 42 per cent of the population.
The VHI annual report, published yesterday, provides much of the material on which the case for a premium increase is based. Medical, labour and technology costs continue to increase substantially here and elsewhere in the developed world. VHI also has to make progress in building its statutory solvency to agreed European Union levels. As a state-owned organisation it must be subject to the same accountability as other sectors of the health service. But it would be a mistake to make the company a scapegoat for much more profound failings of that service - for which the Government properly bears direct political responsibility.