Ireland
Healthcare in the Republic of Ireland is financed mainly by the state. However all citizens have the option of buying additional private health insurance. These services are provided 4 companies. These include the VHI company: a large publicly owned insurer operating like the all the other insurers community rating in which people are insured at the same basic rate regardless of health status. The other insurers are Glo Healthcare, LAYA, and Avivia. Additionally much smaller restricted membership companies exist to provide benefits for certain professions such as police officers.
There are public as well as private hospitals. Private patients are often treated in public hospitals, as by definition all privately insured patients have an entitlement to use the public services.
Read more about this topic: Two-tier Health Care
Famous quotes containing the word ireland:
“Out of Ireland have we come,
Great hatred, little room
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother’s womb
A fanatic’s heart.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Come, fix upon me that accusing eye.
I thirst for accusation. All that was sung.
All that was said in Ireland is a lie
Breed out of the contagion of the throng,
Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The tragedy of Northern Ireland is that it is now a society in which the dead console the living.”
—Jack Holland (b. 1947)