A chara, – As Diarmaid Ferriter notes, Leo Varadkar tells us that he feels "a lot better" having taken out health insurance again ("Varadkar is becoming a cheerleader for private health insurance", Opinion & Analysis, April 25th).
He’s not going to have to wait for months on end for routine medical investigations. He can skip the waiting lists and order nice meals from his private room. He can happily forget that it is Government policy to develop a “universal, single-tiered health service, which guarantees access based on need, not income”.
Leo Varadkar and the introduction of lifetime community rating are reinforcing the two-tiered system. The arbitrary April 30th deadline is blackmailing over-34s who may be struggling with debt, childcare and negative equity, to pay for something that their taxes are already paying for.
Why, apart from Diarmaid Ferriter, is no one commenting on this? – Yours, etc,
EILEEN COUNIHAN
Dublin 18.