BUPA pulls out of Ireland

Medical insurance company BUPA announced on Thursday that it is pulling out of Ireland due to the insistence of the Government that it contributes to a risk equalisation fund which will subsidise rival VHI, which has an older membership profile. BUPA has stopped signing up new members and will not renew the policies of its 475,000 existing members, although they will have cover for the duration of their policies. The move will lead to the loss of 300 jobs, mostly in Fermoy, Co. Cork.
BUPA insists that it cannot trade profitably if the risk equalisation requirement remains. The Government points out that, when BUPA accepted the invitation to enter the Irish market ten years ago, it was fully aware that risk equalisation would be brought in at an appropriate time. When it was introduced, BUPA immediately challenged the decision in court and lost. It then entered negotiations with the Government but these negotiations broke down on Tuesday.
While BUPA argues that it could not sustain the losses arising from risk equalisation the Government consultants, Mercer, concluded that, although BUPA might incur losses in the short term, it would return to profitability. A VHI spokesman said he was disappointed at the BUPA decision and claimed that the company could have remained profitable. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern entered the fray, robustly dismissing BUPA's arguments and saying that the Government would not stand over a situation whereby one company enjoyed big profits by focusing on young healthy members while another was forced to increase premiums because it had a predominance of older members. It should be noted that, while BUPA had a younger membership, it did encourage older people to join at the same rates.
Some economists seemed to sympathise with BUPA MD Martin O'Rourke and blamed the Government for the debacle. Other observers said the rules were clear from day one, although they too bemoaned the departure of BUPA as it is accepted that it brought real competition to the sector. While this may not have resulted in lower prices, it probably limited the rate of increase and certainly introduced a greater range of options. There were also those who were more critical of BUPA, accusing it of only being interested in the high profits its younger members have delivered over the past ten years and of trying to blackmail the Government. Opposition politicians were in a quandary; they too believe in risk equalisation and in competition, so they simply blamed the Government for allowing the negotiations to fail. Members of BUPA seem to be backing the company and lay the blame squarely on Mary Harney.
It was reported on Friday that the Competition Authority will next month publish a report which calls for the break-up of VHI into two or more independent competing units. The only other independent medical insurance company in the country, the much smaller Vivas Health, has no intention of following in BUPA's footsteps. It will seek to reduce the amount due under risk equalisation and hopes to pick up as many BUPA clients as possible. A spokesman claims, however, that VHI, with its state protection, has an advantage over it. The Vivas website explains how easy it is to switch from one insurer to another, even for those receiving ongoing medical treatment.

New funding for care of elderly

Minister for Health Mary Harney has announced details of how the State proposes to take care of the elderly in the future. From January 1, 2008 all elderly people assessed as "high dependency" will be entitled to care in a nursing home, largely at State expense. All nursing home residents will, however, be required to contribute up to 80% of their disposable income. Where this does not meet the cost of the care, and it won't for those on the State pension, a further deduction will be made from those who can afford it. This will be based on the value of the person's house and will amount to 5% per year for a maximum of three years. This payment will only be demanded after death, on the disposal of the estate. Where a dependent relative continues to live in the house the payment will be deferred.
In making the announcement Ms Harney acknowledged that most elderly people prefer to remain in their own homes for as long as possible. To facilitate this she committed to improving the system of home care currently in place.
Ms Harney saw the proposals as a radical improvement on what exists today, where some people have their nursing home costs taken care of by the State while others have to sell their homes and depend on the generosity of relatives.
While many people welcomed the proposals as an important advance on the current inequitable situation, some sections of the media attacked Ms Harney, using the most intemperate language. The tabloid Irish Daily Star was criticised by politicians in the Seanad for its headline "Mary the Blood Sucker".

Another innocent caught in the crossfire

Gardaí in Dublin are investigating a double murder which occurred in Finglas before 10:00am on Tuesday. Responding to an emergency call, officers entered a house at Scribblestown Park and discovered the bodies of two males. Both had been shot. The victims were later named as leading drug dealer Martin "Marlo" Hyland (39) and Anthony Campbell (20) who, as has been said repeatedly, "was in the wrong place at the wrong time".
Mr Campbell, the eldest of four children, lived with his parents at St Michan's Flats in Dublin's north inner city. He was an apprentice plumber who had been dropped at the house at around 9:00am while his employer went off to collect some materials. When the man returned to the house, shortly before 10:00am, he discovered his apprentice dead on the ground floor and Mr Hyland, who had been asleep in an upstairs bedroom, had been shot six times. It appears that those who wanted the drug dealer dead thought nothing of killing the young apprentice to make sure he would never act as a witness.
Martin Hyland had been at the centre of a major garda operation aimed at tackling serious crime in north Dublin. Over the past few months Operation Oak had proved to be particularly successful, with the seizure of drugs valued at €23m, the recovery of a number of firearms and the arrest of 30 people, including Hyland's second in command. At least 24 of those arrested have been charged in the courts but 23 are currently out on bail.
Hyland has been described as possibly the country's biggest drug dealer. Five days before he died he was warned by gardaí that some of his many enemies were planning to kill him. For that reason he was staying at different addresses and, for the previous few nights, he had slept in his niece's house at Scribblestown Park where his enemies caught up with him. The niece had been taking her five-year-old son to school at the time of the shooting.
There is a widespread theory that Hyland was killed as a result of the recent garda success in arresting his accomplices and intercepting his drug shipments. It is thought that some of his erstwhile associates considered him a liability and decided to kill him.
Once Hyland was dead journalists had much to say about him, none of it in any way complimentary. I had never heard of him, apparently because those journalists who knew his history had all been threatened with libel suits if they published anything untoward about him. According to Sunday World crime correspondent Paul Williams, Hyland was a violent and ruthless man who carried out a number of murders and organised others, "five or six in the past year". He accused him of being the person who arranged the murder of Latvian mother-of-two Baiba Saulite. He went further and claimed that the first two people sent to carry out the killing came across Ms Saulite with her two children and couldn't bring themselves to shoot her. Hyland, it is claimed, then gave the job to others who would have no such qualms.
Mr Williams was being interviewed on Joe Duffy's Liveline programme on RTÉ Radio 1. He used the occasion to attack the legal profession, saying that Hyland and others like him have access to the country's best lawyers who are totally unconcerned about the consequences of ensuring their clients remain free to continue with their murderous activities. He went on to claim that a Sunday World undercover team had been monitoring Hyland and had twice seen him in the company of Dessie O'Hare in recent weeks; the two, he said, met in a hotel in Swords one week before Baiba Saulite was murdered. If true this could have serious consequences for the former INLA man who was considered one of the most vicious paramilitaries at the time of his arrest in 1987. He served 18 years of a 40-year sentence and one of the conditions of his extended temporary release is that he does not associate with criminals.