A compulsory health insurance scheme covering hospital and GP treatment and prescribed drugs could mean premiums of £1,500 a year, a conference heard yesterday.
The director of the Centre for Health Economics at UCD, Mr Joe Durkan, told the conference that people would have to pay for accident and emergency services under such a system.
He was addressing the "Towards a Better Healthcare System" seminar organised by the Society of Actuaries in Ireland and chaired by Dr Garret FitzGerald.
Mr Durkan said a more feasible approach would be to extend the current form of insurance - covering elective hospital treatment - to everybody. But even that would involve difficult issues, he said. "What happens in the case of emergency treatment? Is this covered by insurance?" he asked.
Even under this scheme, average premiums would increase because of the need to cover the full costs of treatment, he warned.
The increase in VHI premiums is expected to continue because of the ageing of the population and its high proportion of older members.
"As prices increase some people will not renew cover, others will shift to lower cost programmes, while others will move," he said.
"This will have the effect of increasing claims on the public system. As public services are presently inadequate this will compound an already bad problem."
Mr Durkan described as "wholly bizarre" the situation in which the Government increases charges for private patients in public hospitals and these increases are then used to justify higher premiums for people with health insurance.
If the Government moves to recoup the full cost of treating private patients, there will be a significant fall in people taking out health insurance, he said.
pomorain@irish-times.ie