Health Insurance

Goodbye, not au revoir

Some years ago I was having doubts about my private health insurance. I sought help from the then-Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney. Here is an extract from my letter to her:

Does the possession of private health insurance confer any advantage on someone in need of medical treatment? I presume the answer must be ‘yes’, otherwise why would half the population pay extra for it? However, can you tell me with some precision exactly what those benefits or advantages are?¹

While the department’s reply told me little I did not know already, it contained this revealing nugget:

Private health insurance in Ireland is voluntary cover that any individual may choose to take out, should he or she believe it will be of benefit to them.²

“Believe”?

It made private health insurance out to be more like a religion than a hard-nosed business. (Perhaps it is?) It took several more years after my correspondence with the department, but eventually I lost my own ‘belief’ and decided to quit. When I did I found that the process of cancelling my health insurance was pretty straightforward. I had my name taken off the policy and I stopped the monthly direct debit from our bank account.

Yes, there was a little pushback from the company rep to whom I spoke. This was in November 2023. At first I had trouble persuading her that I was ending my insurance cover - forever! No, I was not interested in a new plan, nor was I switching to a different provider. This was goodbye, not au revoir. Maybe the company does not get many requests from elderly customers who just want out. So I should not be surprised that she was surprised to be handling my call.

I did not suffer any lingering remorse or regret afterwards. On the contrary I felt free (and about €100 a month better off).

I have had a health insurance policy since I started work at 18; I am now 71. Looking back, I can see that keeping it going through marriage, children, and empty-nest old age, was based mainly on fear. Fear of financial ruin if serious illness struck me or one of my loved ones. Fear of second-rate hospitals and second-rate doctors. Fear of being different from my middle-class colleagues. Fear of the unknown. In more recent times I suppose I continued to pay for health insurance ‘just in case’.

‘Just in case’ covered the big stuff that would require the kitchen sink to be thrown at it, such as cancer or heart problems. I assumed that one or the other would hit me or the missus as we got older. There was also the cheery possibility of a sudden ‘act of God’, like being involved in a serious traffic accident, or just falling and breaking a leg. So it was easy to convince myself that it was better to keep our health insurance, ‘just in case’.

That was how I thought before 12 March 2020. But even after that seismic moment it was another couple of years before the penny dropped. That was when I realised with clear certainty that I would not allow any orthodox medical practitioner to come near me if I were to fall ill. So why should I continue to fund a system I would never ever use? The health insurance had to go.

“Trust me, I’m a doctor.”

It was not just health insurance; the whole medical infrastructure felt ‘wrong’. A visit to my GP usually ended after a few minutes with him writing a prescription for some drug or other, even though he had little or no understanding of what was ailing me. I encountered junior doctors working in hospitals who were so sleep-deprived they could barely stay awake long enough to insert a syringe into a patient’s arm.

Of course as long as my family and I were all well, I never bothered to delve more deeply into the root cause of these problems. I might have bitched about the cost of having insurance, or complained about the state of the Irish health service, but I did not dispute the need for some kind of professional medical system to cater for the sick. Our system might be rotten, but surely it could be reformed? So I thought at the time.

However the unfolding covid scam caused me to question all my assumptions, especially about medical matters. It was not the only factor though. Just before covid arrived, I got sick myself.

In June 2018 I became very ill as a series of odd symptoms began to afflict me. One by one, vertigo, blinding headaches, muscular stiffness, skin rashes, etc., laid me so low I had to stay in bed. My GP was baffled, as was a specialist I saw later. The antibiotics and steroids they prescribed made things worse. Indeed, the only time I was brought to hospital during this period was because of drug-related side effects that nearly killed me.

I concluded that no doctor cared as much as I did about my recovery and general wellbeing. So I decided to abandon orthodox medicine and focus instead on healing myself. I changed my diet and began to exercise again. Initially that meant struggling to walk up and down the stairs a few times a day. I also became strictly vegetarian. Because I could not digest solid food for the first few weeks, I started my new regime with home-made smoothies. Between moving around more and eating better my symptoms gradually disappeared. It took about a year but I regained full health by the end of 2019.

Perhaps that experience helped me to navigate the shit-storm that erupted a couple of months later? It certainly helped me to see through the medically-led lies that engulfed our world during the covid era. I researched and read up on the very nature of illness itself. Why do we get sick? What does real health look and feel like? I have been experimenting with my own lifestyle to see if I can find answers to these questions. That experimentation is ongoing so I cannot yet offer definitive answers, even to myself.

However the results so far are encouraging. So encouraging that finally I have cancelled my health insurance.

Good riddance!

1. Letter from JPB to Department of Health & Children, 13 Jan 2010.

2. Letter from Department of Health & Children to JPB, 10 Feb 2010.