VHI health insurance costs to increase by up to 6 percent

The price of health insurance for hundreds of thousands of VHI clients is to go up by an average of 3% from the start of May.

The company insisted it had no alternative but to increase its costs and blamed the “rising cost of claims”.

It is the 2^nd price increase declared by the State’s greatest private health insurer in the last 6 months. It rolled out an average price increase of 2% previous November.

While the average price increase has been put at 3%, few plans given by the VHI will go up by as much as 6% although the company also pointed out that some of the lowest priced plans will not be affected and the cost of other plans will fall slightly.

The price increases will start to kick in at the start of May with individual customers hoped to pay more from their next renewal date.