The health insurance renewal notice usually lands sometime in January, buried between school newsletters, party invites and the odd delivery flyer. The premium’s gone up (again), you roll your eyes, and somewhere between making lunches and finding missing PE kits, it gets shoved in a drawer with a mental note to “look at that later.”
Later rarely happens. The direct debit goes out, the policy auto-renews, and life moves on. Until someone needs A&E at midnight, or the GP suggests a specialist, and suddenly you’re trying to figure out, under pressure, what your family is covered for.
Meanwhile, premiums keep climbing (on average 10% per annum since 2023), adding hundreds of euros to a family’s bill.
The thing is, family life changes constantly. But has your health insurance? If you’ve been on the same plan for more than a few years, there’s a good chance it hasn’t, and that can mean paying more than you need to, for cover that doesn’t really fit your family needs anymore.
When Did Your Family Actually Change?
Most parents can’t pinpoint when their children’s needs changed, it just happens.
They stop getting every bug that goes around the classroom, or they start one sport that leads to minor injuries, or they suddenly shoot up in height and need their eyes tested more regularly. Suddenly, the “child” on your policy is suddenly 19 and in college.
But your health insurance doesn’t quietly adjust in the background. Unless you review it, you may be paying for:
• Benefits you don’t need anymore
• Private room cover that sounded great when they were tiny but doesn’t matter as much now
• A “one-size-fits-all” family plan, where the adults and kids all have the same level of cover
At the same time, you might be missing things that matter more now, like strong outpatient benefits for scans, physio or consultant visits, which most often are what families actually use.
It's not anyone's fault - it's just that reviewing health insurance falls firmly into the category of "things that feel too complicated to deal with right now." Especially when comparing policies means wading through dozens of providers, trying to decode insurance-speak, and inevitably ending up more confused than when you started.
What Actually Makes Sense Now
Here's the reality for most families with school-age children: they need cover that gets their kids seen quickly when something's wrong, without costing a fortune every month.
Cover that makes sense:
• Private Hospital cover for the inevitable accidents.
• Outpatient benefits so seeing a consultant doesn't mean a six-month public waiting list or a massive private bill.
• Day-to-day cover for GP visits that add up faster than anyone expects.
• Plans that match their needs, not just copied from Mum or Dad
Cover that doesn’t make sense:
• Paying for every private hospital in the country if you’d realistically only use a couple nearby
• Keeping expensive extras “just in case” when you’ve barely used them in years
• Insisting everyone in the family has the same level of cover, even though they don’t have the same health profile
According to the Health Insurance Comparison Team at Cornmarket, families can save serious money by splitting cover (different plans for different family members) and by moving off older, high-cost plans to newer, better-value options, with average family savings of over €700*.
This is what Cornmarket’s health insurance team does every day. They work for you, not the insurer, comparing all plans from all insurers to find the right cover for you and your family. They've built their reputation on actually understanding what Irish families need - and more importantly, what they don't need. Instead of pushing the most expensive policy available, they compare plans from all the major insurers and help families find what genuinely fits and potentially saving money along the way. No jargon, no “hard sell”, just matching benefits to real life and budget.
The Bit Nobody Talks About
Many families who finally get around to reviewing their health insurance discover they've been overpaying for years. Not by a little bit - by hundreds of euros annually. Money that could go towards school trips, after-school activities, or frankly anything more useful than insurance cover they're not using.
One Cornmarket advisor put it simply: families are often paying for cover they don't actually need, or missing benefits they could really use. A proper review usually means better cover and genuine savings - real money back in the household budget.
And because Cornmarket handles all the tedious comparison work, it's actually quick. No spending hours on comparison websites. No trying to decode policy documents written in impenetrable insurance language. Just a straightforward conversation about what the family actually needs.
Worth Checking Before the Next Renewal
So, before that direct debit goes out again, it’s worth a short check-up on your insurance. Ask yourself:
• Is our plan more than three to five years old?
• Are our children and young adults on the right rate and the right plan for their age?
• Are we paying for extras we haven’t used in years?
• Have we checked whether there’s a better-value option that keeps the cover we actually need?
The Health Insurance Authority’s advice is to “review before you renew” and they remind consumers that you have a 14-day cooling-off period if you switch and then change your mind. In other words, you don’t have to just accept whatever arrives in the post.
A consultation with Cornmarket can help you answer those questions quickly. They’ll review your current cover, explain what makes sense for your family now, and, if it’s worth switching, they’ll support the next steps.
Visit cornmarket.ie/health-insurance to try out their free online health insurance comparison tool.
This is a paid partnership with Cornmarket Health Insurance
*Based on 2,021 clients who reviewed their cover between May 2024 & May 2025. Source, Cornmarket June 2025.
Cornmarket Group Financial Services Ltd. is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
