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:
“They call them the haunted shores, these stretches of Devonshire and Cornwall and Ireland which rear up against the westward ocean. Mists gather here, and sea fog, and eerie stories. That’s not because there are more ghosts here than in other places, mind you. It’s just that people who live hereabouts are strangely aware of them.”
—Dodie Smith, and Lewis Allen. Roderick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland)
“There is no topic ... more soporific and generally boring than the topic of Ireland as Ireland, as a nation.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.... They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools, they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
—Patrick Henry Pearse (1879–1916)