FINE GAEL and a patients' representative group have criticised the price hikes announced by the VHI and Quinn Healthcare and predicted they would drive people out of private health insurance.
The Irish Patients' Association said it was very concerned about the level of increases announced by the companies and called for a review by Minister for Health Mary Harney.
Its spokesman, Stephen McMahon, predicted the increases would push more people out of health insurance and on to a reliance on an already-overstretched health system.
Fine Gael blamed the price hikes on Government mistakes and predicted many subscribers would cancel their policies to save money.
The party's health spokesman, Dr James Reilly, said customers were paying for the "ill-judged" measures introduced by the Government, which were making health insurance unaffordable for many age groups, including the elderly.
He accused the Government of distorting the market to such an extent that it was driving customers out by imposing a levy and increasing bed charges. "Many of these will be young people who, faced with a choice between paying their mortgage or their health insurance, will have to choose the former," said Dr Reilly.
Some older people would be losing their medical cards and now may not be able to afford their health insurance. "It is clear that the so-called community rating levy is being directly passed on to customers. How else can the VHI, with profits of €112 million last year, justify this increase?
"If the Government had wanted to completely mess up competition in the health insurance market they couldn't have done a more thorough job. Instead of meeting the challenge of re-designing risk equalisation, the Minister has foisted interim measures on the system which have made things worse for everyone.
"The Government has made the health service a vicious circle - they've undermined the public health system at every turn. They promoted private medicine but made an unmitigated mess of the private health insurance market and, in a financial crisis, they have targeted patients to pay for their mistakes," he added.
