In the USA health insurance customers suffer for such intervention in a (before) free market: premium increases, more people can't afford such premiums and depends on MediCare, supported by tax-payers.
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=14644
Any private health insurance program needs to address the problems found in parts of the American system - what do you do with people who cannot afford the insurance? how do you prevent the constant litigation? what about people who cannot find work and thus cannot get insurance?
It was observed by my company in Alabama that many people wanted a job with us just so they could get the health insurance they otherwise couldn't afford.
EG
Insurance that has forced transfers is not insurance. Insurance is a pooling of resources to provide coverage when an event occurs. The event is probable but not certain. That is the underlying logic of insurance. If all cases are covered by force, then there is no uncertainty in it. All known cases will be covered by resources coercively impounded. That is State sanctioned theft, not insurance.
None of this is different from the way that private health care is financed in the US. i work with people who have chronic problems ( in both cases, back problems, which are lifelong injuries); and both are covered by just working where I work - costs that are totally hidden from them as the company pays the insurance.
In some ways this form of health insurance is like getting fire insurance on a volcano. However, it seems that private health care has to be accessed like that - which probably explains why American health care is so inefficient and expensive - even though it operates under "market" conditions.
The challenges of the EU health insurance policies are not unique to Ireland, although the country can certainly be viewed as a pre-cursor of things to come.
Leaving aside universal access and its default - lifetime cover, the one area that can be realistically modified is community rating - but only so far. Certainly a case can be made for ratings based on age and sex. Health status is the challenge as rating based on health status, say a genetic predisposition to diabetes, would infringe on the universal access. In this case, costs could prohibit access.
A more “modern” approach may be the use of very large deductibles for compulsory coverage based on income. Allow for tax advantage savings to cover the deductible, e.g. Singapore’s 3Ms. Also a full “opt out” feature guaranteed with private cover, again “means tested” or income dependent.