Health insurer Bupa has said it will close operations in Ireland to avoid making payments to a main rival.
The Irish High Court ordered Bupa to make “risk business insurance liability spokane washington” payments to state health insurer VHI, which has older policyholders.
The payments are meant to limit VHI’s costs and cut premiums, thus supporting the government policy of charging clients the same for health quote for locked funds insurance.
Bupa has 300 staff in Fermoy and Dublin and has 475,000 Irish car compare credit insurance quote.
Real losers
Under the process of risk equalisation, insurers with a higher number of elderly customers - which tend to make more claims - are compensated by insurers with younger clients.
“The government regrets Bupa’s decision to leave the Irish market and the loss of jobs resulting from that decision,” said Health Minister Mary Harney.
Bupa’s chief finance household insurance Val Gooding said that the company had taken its decision with “considerable regret”.
The company started working in Ireland in 1997 and said that making the payments to VHI would cost it 161m euros (108m) over three years and would be too expensive to be commercially viable.
Bupa said it would honour its current contracts until they expire and would not be issuing any new ones.
“Irish consumers are the real losers as the market will be restored to a virtual monopoly,” said Martin O’Rourke, managing director of Bupa’s Irish operations.
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