Private Vs Public Healthcare in Ireland

Greentopia

Rulmeq wrote: »

There will be a waiting period when you sign up for any new plans (up to 2 years on some stuff). If you can afford €1k, you can get quite a bit of work done for that (although it can also disappear very quickly if they discover stuff that needs work!)

My guy is paying €450 a MONTH in Germany for his health insurance. He would love to only pay €1k a year! And you have to have it by law. That's normal there if you're self employed as you have to pay the employee AND employers part of the contribution which equals 14% of your salary.

Geuze

Greentopia wrote: »

My guy is paying €450 a MONTH in Germany for his health insurance. He would love to only pay €1k a year! And you have to have it by law. That's normal there if you're self employed as you have to pay the employee AND employers part of the contribution which equals 14% of your salary.

Note of course that many people in Ireland pay tax + optional insurance in Ireland.

The Germans pay just the compulsory insurance..

[I didn't know the self-employed in DE have to pay the ER cont as well]

baby and crumble

I was diagnosed with a rare spinal tumor earlier this year - I paid myself to go to a private consultant and I'm not able to claim back those visits on my health insurance, but all my MRI's (3 to date), my surgery, anesthetist were all covered by my insurance. I got the settled claim the other day - my bill just for the procedure to remove the tumor would have seen me looking at the guts of a €7k bill. My plan didn't cover my pre-op night however, so I need to pay €800+ for that one night - and that was in a 6 person ward in a public hospital.

I will forever be grateful for both the ability to pay for health insurance and also being comfortable enough that i didn't have to put off my consultant appointments because of money. Now, we don't have piles of money, by any stretch, and things have been lean this year to pay for them all out of pocket, but I know that if i didn't do it I'd be paralysed by now.

Then again, when my neurosurgeon was asking if i had health insurance and we said yes but we weren't sure what was covered, he basically said "don't worry - we'll sort it out for you".

Snails pace

Have health insurance here. My mother got cancer a few years ago, went to the public hospital, told it was nothing serious and dont worry, not happy with the diagnosis. Went to a private hospital, seen to immediately and treatment started with a few weeks. Luckily the plan covered the majority of the treatment, we still had to pay a good bit of money. If we didn't have insurance my family are certain that our mother would be in the grave. All is good now and thankfully it's just a distant memory

mariaalice

baby and crumble wrote: »

I was diagnosed with a rare spinal tumor earlier this year - I paid myself to go to a private consultant and I'm not able to claim back those visits on my health insurance, but all my MRI's (3 to date), my surgery, anesthetist were all covered by my insurance. I got the settled claim the other day - my bill just for the procedure to remove the tumor would have seen me looking at the guts of a €7k bill. My plan didn't cover my pre-op night however, so I need to pay €800+ for that one night - and that was in a 6 person ward in a public hospital.

I will forever be grateful for both the ability to pay for health insurance and also being comfortable enough that i didn't have to put off my consultant appointments because of money. Now, we don't have piles of money, by any stretch, and things have been lean this year to pay for them all out of pocket, but I know that if i didn't do it I'd be paralysed by now.

Then again, when my neurosurgeon was asking if i had health insurance and we said yes but we weren't sure what was covered, he basically said "don't worry - we'll sort it out for you".

Once you were diagnoised you would have got exclent treatment on the public system.

Caranica

mariaalice wrote: »

Once you were diagnoised you would have got exclent treatment on the public system.

Tell that to those kids whose chemo got cancelled due to lack of beds!

baby and crumble

mariaalice wrote: »

Once you were diagnoised you would have got exclent treatment on the public system.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t, however I do know that I would have gone into a waiting list for surgery, because my tumour was found early enough that my only symptom was pain. Most others with this tumour get diagnosed at the stage of paralysis or loss of bladder or bowel function, because “back pain” is not enough of a symptom in of itself. Having private health insurance meant I could go for the relevant tests and treatment much faster, which has allowed me to be pretty much pain and symptom free after 3 months. Not everyone in the public system is that lucky.

171170

baby and crumble wrote: »

I was diagnosed with a rare spinal tumor earlier this year - I paid myself to go to a private consultant and I'm not able to claim back those visits on my health insurance, but all my MRI's (3 to date), my surgery, anesthetist were all covered by my insurance. I got the settled claim the other day - my bill just for the procedure to remove the tumor would have seen me looking at the guts of a €7k bill. My plan didn't cover my pre-op night however, so I need to pay €800+ for that one night - and that was in a 6 person ward in a public hospital.

I will forever be grateful for both the ability to pay for health insurance and also being comfortable enough that i didn't have to put off my consultant appointments because of money. Now, we don't have piles of money, by any stretch, and things have been lean this year to pay for them all out of pocket, but I know that if i didn't do it I'd be paralysed by now.

Then again, when my neurosurgeon was asking if i had health insurance and we said yes but we weren't sure what was covered, he basically said "don't worry - we'll sort it out for you".

Be sure to claim the income tax back on every cent that you paid from your own resources.

shesty

pinkyeye wrote: »

No-one has really answered the question I asked in the first place which is "what use is private health insurance when you have to call an ambulance to get to a hospital?".

And why does Leo Vardakar and the likes of him never end up in A&E even when they have to call an ambulance?

I GUARANTEE you Simon Harris will NEVER EVER be in a public A&E.

It is of no use.This is Ireland, we have been conditioned to think we all need health insurance.When in fact we have the makings and facilities of a decent public health system.They need investment and staff, yes.But we pay with our taxes to fund our health system, which provides many many services.Why on earth are we all being told we should have health insurance too, just to access the same facilities and doctors '"quicker'?(again, I am not including actual standalone private facilities in those, which are very much in the minority)

The whole thing is screwed up.Health insurance is a necessity now because it has been allowed to become that way.Doesn't make the whole thing right though.

shesty

baby and crumble wrote: »

I was diagnosed with a rare spinal tumor earlier this year - I paid myself to go to a private consultant and I'm not able to claim back those visits on my health insurance, but all my MRI's (3 to date), my surgery, anesthetist were all covered by my insurance. I got the settled claim the other day - my bill just for the procedure to remove the tumor would have seen me looking at the guts of a €7k bill. My plan didn't cover my pre-op night however, so I need to pay €800+ for that one night - and that was in a 6 person ward in a public hospital.

I will forever be grateful for both the ability to pay for health insurance and also being comfortable enough that i didn't have to put off my consultant appointments because of money. Now, we don't have piles of money, by any stretch, and things have been lean this year to pay for them all out of pocket, but I know that if i didn't do it I'd be paralysed by now.

Then again, when my neurosurgeon was asking if i had health insurance and we said yes but we weren't sure what was covered, he basically said "don't worry - we'll sort it out for you".

100% do not blame you...but was that consultant, operation, theatre and ward actually physically located in a public hospital?Because if so, that right there illustrates exactly the problem.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not in the least blaning you-you did exactly what you had to do, and the system allows you to do that.But I struggle to understand why we all cannot see that this is not right.

shesty

Hellrazer wrote: »

I posted this in another thread but I think its relevant here.
For the record I don't have Private Health Insurance but did offer to pay for her operation(about 40k) but its not done in any of the private clinics only in Tallaght Childrens Hospital or Crumlin.

100%.As I said earlier, I absolutely fail to see why so many people accept this situation as the right way to do business.It is infuriating.

Rodin

baby and crumble wrote: »

I’m not saying I wouldn’t, however I do know that I would have gone into a waiting list for surgery, because my tumour was found early enough that my only symptom was pain. Most others with this tumour get diagnosed at the stage of paralysis or loss of bladder or bowel function, because “back pain” is not enough of a symptom in of itself. Having private health insurance meant I could go for the relevant tests and treatment much faster, which has allowed me to be pretty much pain and symptom free after 3 months. Not everyone in the public system is that lucky.

How much have you paid in total into private health insurance in your life?

shesty

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/health/hospital-consultants-offered-252150-salary-to-end-private-queue-jumping-38798186.html

I shall be watching this with interest.

salonfire

shesty wrote: »

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/health/hospital-consultants-offered-252150-salary-to-end-private-queue-jumping-38798186.html

I shall be watching this with interest.

Hopefully it doesn't leave private medicine with a shortage of consultants.

What use are consultants in a public system surrounded by staff entrenched in union warfare with their Employer all the time.

shesty

The ideal would be that the only places private consultants are found are in private hospitals like the Beacon, the Hermitage et al.As I noted before, these facilities are in a relative minority and I am not aware that any of them are hugely specialist in what they deal with (i am open to correction on that mind you).

The other side of it is that any and all space and work in public hospitals would then be occupied and carried out by public facilities and staff.To get to that point would take huge money and time and recruitment.

A family member was brought in through A&E to one of the big Dublin hospitals a couple of years ago.Two days were spent in A&E, a further 6 days in a 10 bed ward.He was woken at 4am on the third morning in the hospital to sign a form stating he had insurance and the hospital could claim.His insurance covers semi private care.So he was paying to stay in a 10 bed ward (with a genuine acute problem that the hospital identified extremely quickly) and 2 days in A&E through his taxes, plus on top of that, a claim to the insurance company simply because he had health insurance.There were no private consultants, no private rooms, nothing like that, he was admitted and treated like a public patient, (which was fine) but the hospital wanted to claim anyway.What part of that is right????A similar scenario played out in the admission of a another family member's small baby to Temple Street last year.The whole system is broken.

stratowide

The last place I worked provided free provided health cover.Twice I had to go to hospital in those 15 years and neither were covered by VHI.
Once for a broken leg and once for a CT scan.

VHI rang me when I left and gave me a spook story about how the premium will be loaded if I don't continue the policy.i didn't and now have no private health insurance.

Public health services are nowhere near as bad as they are made out to be.Im gonna take my chances in the public health system.
Scare tactics from the private healthcare suppliers I don't heed at all.





As a caveat to all that I have enough money saved that if I ever need a scan or to see a consultant urgently i can do so.(cash will always get you in the door).

I'm a big fan of preventative maintenance as it were.
No processed foods,processed sugars,wheat products,smoking.Very little alcohol.
Try to eat as clean as I can and throw in some vigorous exercise into the mix too.

Try to keep out of the hospital in the first place would be my plan.

Some good reading on modern western diseases by Gary Taubes or Robert Lustig.

Some big players have a vested interest in keeping people chronically ill.

mountai

My experience , went to A&E with cancer related problem . Was approached by the "Money Maid" to sign form allowing HI co to be debited . Asked the question , will I get "Private " treatment and a private room . Was informed that there were no "Private" facilities available , so I declined to sign form . Money Maid then went to my wife who was waiting outside , she told my wife I refused to sign the form so would SHE sign it instead . Needless to say she was given short shrift . Why should people be put under such pressure by HSE staff ??.

LionKing7

In my opinion health care system here needs to be changed completely.
I would like to share the health care system in an asian country where I came from.
Public System:
It is a free health care system which offered every type of treatments for all people absolutely at no cost.
Hospitals are at district, province and national level and there is no GP system as such, but there is a OPD in every hospital which people can go and see a doctor.
A&Es are there in most of the hospitals and if doctors decides someone needs more treatments then will be transfered to the closest main hospital.
Doctors works for the government and wards are allocated to consultants. Basically there is a doctor at each ward 24*7 (either an intern, or a registar).
Consultants visits patients daily at 7.00 a.m. to 7.30 a.m. and do the ward rounds. (So the interns, pre registars and registars visit patient around 6.30 a.m. to have a small discussion to provide a summary to Consultant when he/she does the ward round).
Consultants then go to either to theater or clinics to see the OPD or regular patients.
Nurses takes care of the patients and there are lots of attendants who help nurses.
Medicine: Free.
Diagnostic Tests: Free and will be available in hours time.
Eye lences, stents are also free.

Private System:
All the consultants do private practises but before 7.00 a.m. and after 5.00 p.m.
If anyone wants to see a consultant without waiting for a hours in public system (OPD) then they can straight away go to a private hospital and take an appointment. Unlike here you don't need any referrel letter. It's just you need to pay the amount (around 15 euros max) and you can see the doctor same day or next day.
Then when you meet the Consultant he will discuss and if it is surgery he asks whether paitaint wants do the procedure in public hospital or in a private hospital. Based on the paitaint's choise he will give a letter for the addmission.
Private Hospitals have all the facilities as well.
Medicine: Need to pay and get better brands.
Diagnostic Tests: Need to pay and report will be available in hours time.

Please note that the country is still a developing country therefore the costs of the private charges are not as high as here. As an example for a one night stay I saw that people have said it costs 800 euros but there for a best private room it will cost you 250 euros.

Rodin

LionKing7 wrote: »

In my opinion health care system here needs to be changed completely.
I would like to share the health care system in an asian country where I came from.
Public System:
It is a free health care system which offered every type of treatments for all people absolutely at no cost.
Hospitals are at district, province and national level and there is no GP system as such, but there is a OPD in every hospital which people can go and see a doctor.
A&Es are there in most of the hospitals and if doctors decides someone needs more treatments then will be transfered to the closest main hospital.
Doctors works for the government and wards are allocated to consultants. Basically there is a doctor at each ward 24*7 (either an intern, or a registar).
Consultants visits patients daily at 7.00 a.m. to 7.30 a.m. and do the ward rounds. (So the interns, pre registars and registars visit patient around 6.30 a.m. to have a small discussion to provide a summary to Consultant when he/she does the ward round).
Consultants then go to either to theater or clinics to see the OPD or regular patients.
Nurses takes care of the patients and there are lots of attendants who help nurses.
Medicine: Free.
Diagnostic Tests: Free and will be available in hours time.
Eye lences, stents are also free.

Private System:
All the consultants do private practises but before 7.00 a.m. and after 5.00 p.m.
If anyone wants to see a consultant without waiting for a hours in public system (OPD) then they can straight away go to a private hospital and take an appointment. Unlike here you don't need any referrel letter. It's just you need to pay the amount (around 15 euros max) and you can see the doctor same day or next day.
Then when you meet the Consultant he will discuss and if it is surgery he asks whether paitaint wants do the procedure in public hospital or in a private hospital. Based on the paitaint's choise he will give a letter for the addmission.
Private Hospitals have all the facilities as well.
Medicine: Need to pay and get better brands.
Diagnostic Tests: Need to pay and report will be available in hours time.

Please note that the country is still a developing country therefore the costs of the private charges are not as high as here. As an example for a one night stay I saw that people have said it costs 800 euros but there for a best private room it will cost you 250 euros.

How is system funded?
What is the tax rate in this country?
What is average lifespan and infant mortality rate in this country ?

LionKing7

Rodin wrote: »

How is system funded?
What is the tax rate in this country?
What is average lifespan and infant mortality rate in this country ?

System is funded by the government.

Being a developing Country it is heavily depends on indirect taxes and not in direct taxes (Income Tax rates there are very low compared to here).
Cooperate Tax rate: 28%

Average Lifespan was 75.28 in 2016 and infant mortality rate was 6.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2018. Please note that the population there is more than 20 million.

Winning_Stroke

A few years back I was the doctors and a small something was notice, doc said that it wasn't urgent or dangerous so I could be waiting a year or so. I said I had private healthcare. 5 weeks later I was in the fanciest hospital I've ever seen. Was brought a paper and tea while waiting for the minor surgery. Even the nurses were hot! It was done and dusted and the whole thing blew me away. The difference between that service and the one I had years previous through the public system (got my tonsils removed) was night and day.

Geuze

shesty wrote: »

The ideal would be that the only places private consultants are found are in private hospitals like the Beacon, the Hermitage et.

One of the reasons private activity is allowed in public hosps is that in the past, there were few private hosps.

So if you had insurance in Donegal, Mayo, Tipp, etc., there weren't any private hosps nearby.

So the insured patients were allowed to access care in the public hosp.

Stovepipe

First, stop having consultants as the pivot around which the health service rotates. Just because a doctor in a hospital is not a consultant, does not mean that they are unacceptable. They are usually highly skilled and competent, just not consultants and are commonly known as registrars or senior house officers and they are perfectly capable of making diagnoses and coming up with solutions.In my experience, consultants usually tick the box already indicated by the junior doctor, the Reg or the SHO and only deal with the very serious stuff directly. they should not be the Gods of the system.

shesty

Geuze wrote: »

One of the reasons private activity is allowed in public hosps is that in the past, there were few private hosps.

So if you had insurance in Donegal, Mayo, Tipp, etc., there weren't any private hosps nearby.

So the insured patients were allowed to access care in the public hosp.

That's ok, but I think we have long ago reached the point where that needs to change.

shesty

Geuze wrote: »

One of the reasons private activity is allowed in public hosps is that in the past, there were few private hosps.

So if you had insurance in Donegal, Mayo, Tipp, etc., there weren't any private hosps nearby.

So the insured patients were allowed to access care in the public hosp.

That's ok, but I think we have long ago reached the point where that needs to change.

Thinking about it, it still comes back to making people 'need' insurance in the first place when there is a public health service available.

pinkyeye

Well I have to say I had a great experience in the public system yesterday.

Had one appointment for 930 for a pet scan and another for 11 in the fracture clinic and I was convinced I'd never make it in time between the two.

This was in CUH by the way. Out from the pet scan at 10.05, delighted, time for a cup of tea and muffin, up to the other appointment, saw consultant, sent for x-ray, back to consultant and down to physio, all by 12pm.

Have to hand it to them so efficient. Can not fault one part of the service.

That's my first experience in CUH so maybe it's much better than Dublin hospitals.

I often hear about the trolley numbers and CUH seems to be up there with the highest so maybe it's just the A & E where there's a problem.

jlm29

Geuze wrote: »

One of the reasons private activity is allowed in public hosps is that in the past, there were few private hosps.

So if you had insurance in Donegal, Mayo, Tipp, etc., there weren't any private hosps nearby.

So the insured patients were allowed to access care in the public hosp.

The public hospitals also need the money that the private patients bring in.

As I’ve said on various threads on this site I’ve had 8/9admissions to a private hospital and I e admission to a public one in the past 9 years, with quite a lot of major surgeries etc, so have got to see closely how things work in the fairly chaotic systems.

Just came upon this thread, where OP says that mikes of Leo would be carted to a private hospital and get better treatment. On that point I know in fair detail how a former Taoiseach was treated in his final illness. He had been attending a private hospital for chronic illness. However when he developed a very bad cough & fever his family brought him to a public hospital, as OP says, the private hospitals aren’t the place where most serious acute conditions end up. In the case of that Taoiseach, the A&E sent the elderly man home after a duly long wait on a chair, with a prescription for antibiotics. The family were so worried and upset at having to take an extremely ill and elderly father home, and he was getting worse over the course of the next day. He had taken ill at the weekend, so on Monday they phoned his consultant at the private hospital to say how ill he was. Only then was he allowed to be admitted to the private hospital where he died in about a week and a half. He was badly let down at the public hospital.

In each 2010s I got admitted to a private hospital with various fairly serious ailments. However I had to be able to walk in, and attend during their limited opening times. I had a heart attack which happened during that time and collapsed after presenting myself, having walked in with chest pain-I really ought to have called myself an ambulance, as I did in 2018 when I was totally floored by a strangulated hernia and unable to bring myself in with help of a relative or in a taxi. My GI consultant at the private hospital wondered why I hadn’t somehow made my way to the private hospital, but as I said to him I could hardly walk at all, and since mid 2010s the private hospital had been turning people away from their emergency department because of lack of beds. What is more the Private doesn’t EVEN provide you with a trolley to lie on, you are left waiting in a corridor for up to 8 hours.

I spoke to an appendicitis patient who had been waiting in that corridor for 7 hours, and was told a surgeon would be able to operate later, but that there was no actual bed and she would have to wait on a chair an indefinite number of further hours until an operating theatre was available, and likely she would be discharged within a couple of hours of surgery, because there was no space.

All private medicine is doing now is sharing in the general shortage of treatment places in Ireland. Also in most cases there is a good bit more space around the beds, and the food is better.

Rodin

LionKing7 wrote: »

System is funded by the government.

Being a developing Country it is heavily depends on indirect taxes and not in direct taxes (Income Tax rates there are very low compared to here).
Cooperate Tax rate: 28%

Average Lifespan was 75.28 in 2016 and infant mortality rate was 6.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2018. Please note that the population there is more than 20 million.

Lifespan about 7 years less than Ireland.
That infant mortality rate is double Ireland.
Only 3 EU countries have a worse rate.

No thank you.

Rodin

If I need a hip, knee, cataract, hernia etc then a private hospital is fine.

If Im actually sick I want a University Teaching Hospital