Search Results for 'health insurance'

Labour General Election candidate Dr Jerry Cowley is calling on the Equality Authority to address what he has dubbed “the blatant discrimination” against older people by VHI who have raised their premium levels for older people.

And they’re off! The 30th Dáil reached the end of its troubled life on Tuesday and the starting gun was fired on the race for the 31st Dáil. The various candidates will be calling to your door in the coming weeks and you will be bombarded with literature, promises, and pledges.

With Aviva you have access to more hospital, treatment, and scan centres than any other health insurer; 24-hour access to nurse-on-call service, and a wider range of member benefits including teeth whitening and laser eye surgery.

A number of nurses at University Hospital Galway, under severe pressure from staff and bed shortages, have written to management disclaiming responsibility in the event of anything going wrong on their watch, a local nursing union representative revealed this week.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has strongly criticised the announcement by the VHI to increase premiums this year by up to 45 per cent.

Probably the worst aspect of the outrageous VHI premium hikes up to 45 per cent as announced this month is the fact that, with so many millions pumped into the public health service over the years, people in this country need to have private health insurance at all. Not so long ago — a mere six months ago actually — the outgoing chief executive of the HSE - Professor Brendan Drumm, suggested that improvements in the HSE were so progressive it would make complete sense for everyone to use the public health service. He consequently foresaw a day where people simply would not have a need to take out private health insurance at all.

The decision by VHI to hike premium levels by up to 45 per cent in some instances means that hard-pressed families with private VHI Healthcare are facing a massive €331 hike in fees to keep parents-and-children cover.

A local city councillor has warned that the massive hike in VHI premiums will result in more people reducing or dropping their private health insurance which will put additional pressure on the already overburdened public healthcare system.

Kilkenny VHI members are to be landed with a 15 per cent hike n their private health insurance bill from February this year.

While the campaign to stop any cuts for pensions proved successful in the four year recovery plan, Age Action has expressed its disappointment that the Government has ‘agreed to freeze the rate of the State pension until 2015, as part of the bailout deal it has reached with the IMF and the EU’.