Health Insurance Authority Site
Friday, July 14, 2006
...is crap! It's a public sector site so you can bet it cost a pretty penny and went through a rigorous selection process. If anyone knows who is responsible for it, please let us know by adding it as a comment below.
Get this for incomprehensible speak - like a typical user, I came in, clicked on 'switching health insurer' and was presented with this:
If you switch health insurers and there is no gap in cover (or the gap is less than 13 weeks), there is no upgrade of cover and providing you have served all your waiting period with your old insurer, then the new insurer cannot impose any additional waiting period.
If you have not completed your waiting period with your old insurer, your new insurer must give you credit for the amount of the waiting period that you have served.
If you switch health insurers and there is a gap in cover of more than 13 weeks then you may need to serve a waiting periods as if you have never had insurance before. Different waiting periods apply depending on your particular circumstances.
Does that read well to you? No. It reads well to someone who's immersed in the jargon of the HIA. It is also grammatically incorrect and missing some words which is totally unprofessional. Who's the big boss that's supposed to sign off on this site? Shame on you!
Furthermore, there's no contact us anywhere on the site, no Irish language, and most of the content is written by some very self important person whose focus is mainly on the authority and not on the user's needs.So, if your health insurance policy is up for renewal and you're looking at what's available in the market, I suggest you ignore this site and visit the individual sites of the three insurers. There is one thing that's right on the HIA site and that's an image of an orange and an apple - cliched image, but definitely applies in this case where you're trying to compare policies.