does health insurance matter?

I am looking for some advice, my health insurance is due to be renewed soon & I can't really afford it anymore... I am hoping to start trying for a baby this time next year, should I keep my insurance or does it really make a difference? What do you think? Thanks!

If you go public it makes no difference - you won't use your insurance. For public patients everything is free and the vast majority of people are very happy with the care they receive. If you want to private there are significant costs on top of your health insurance - you will pay the consultant around €4000 (in Dublin anyway) and health insurance will only give you around €400 back (depending on your plan). This will entitle you to see the same consultant on each visit, get a scan and for him/ her to be there at the birth. Your insurance will cover you to be in a private room after the birth (if there is one available). If you go semi-private, you will pay around €1000 euro to the hospital and will get a semi-private room after birth covered by insurance (usually with around 5 beds in it). There are a few threads on here comparing public/ private/ semi-private options. You can also call you local hospital to ask for more details.

Thanks a mil, that's what I had thought I heard. I have a friend who works in a hospital & she said she would go public when she has babies, so I guess I don't need to worry about not having health insurance. Seems like pregnant ladies in Ireland are well looked after, regardless of their income!

Not for pregnancy and labour unless you have some particualr problem with you or the baby that you want monitored by a consultant and need special support for. The public health system SHOULD be able to cover this also sufficiently but I know when you are ill and/or very worried, having access to a proper consultant on the private system is a comfort. I think the bigger issue is having health insurance for more important things (not that baby isnt important but it isnt an illness and there is a good system in place to give you care for free) such as serious illness in later life. Harder to justify when you are young and well but thats what health insurance is all about!

I don't think it matters so much when pg - I have health insurance but am public and I am very happy with my care. However children get sick alot! So I would say health insurance when you have kids is def a major plus. We claim back on all gp appointment s and for us one hospital overnight stay last year would have cost us up in 2000 euro if we weren't covered. Just worth a thought for further on down the line.

wifetob that hospital stay last year, was it in a private hospital? if it a reg public hospital it would only have been 75 euro, and correct me if i'm wrong but you only pay for a max of 10 nights no matter how long you are in hosp as a public patient, therefore the most you can pay as a public patiet with no medical card or health insurance is 750 euro per year, I just cancelled my health insurance and trying to justify it really!! But when i had insurance i choose to have my 2 babies as a public patient and now this this time round i'll be public too.

It was in cork university hospital which isn't private if I'm correct. It included the emergency paediatric ward (referred automatically from gp), 1 overnight stay and all the consultants, tests which were done while we were there. Thankfully ds did not have meningitis so we got to come home after 1 night. The receipt came almost a year later and we couldn't believe it. I'm not entirely up on public v private but that was our only experience so far (and please god will be our only one).

That being said lucky mummy I may av got the same care with a much cheaper bill if I was public - I just provided them with our insurance details up front.

yeah that what happened, if you were public you pay 75 per night, more than likely would have got same treatments and investigations, The public system is great in emergancies like that, really lets you down for anything elective though, thata were i'll miss my insurance. glad your little man was ok.