Kevin has little faith in health service

HE earns 314 a month working at the Centre for the Unemployed. His mortgage is 130.

He has two children living at home, one on the dole. He is a chronic diabetic. Without a medical card, he would have to do without medication. In that respect, 52-year-old Kevin Clarke, from 12 Farranferris Crescent, Farranree, Cork city, is lucky. He has a medical card. What he does not have is private health insurance and must join the long queues of the public patient. He wants the Government to invest more in eliminating waiting lists in next week’s Budget.

When Kevin first went to the doctor feeling dehydrated and fatigued after returning from a holiday in Spain in August 1996, he was not immediately diagnosed as a diabetic. Because he had stomach pain, he was treated for stomach problems. The tiredness and constant thirst persisted. Kevin’s doctor decided to refer him to a specialist. It was a year before he got to see a consultant. He was diagnosed as diabetic and will be insulin-dependent for the rest of his life.

At first he had no medical card but was entitled to money back under the Drug Payment Scheme (DPS). Without this entitlement, he would have been paying 73 per month for drugs, GP visits aside. With the increase in the DPS threshold in this year’s Budget estimates, requiring a 78 monthly spend on drugs, Kevin would have had to pay for all of his medication.

“I just wouldn’t have been able to afford the drugs. It is a great relief to me that I have now got a medical card. Before I got it, there were times when I had to say to my GP ‘I just don’t have the money to pay for this visit’.”

About a year-and-a-half ago, Kevin got a pain down his shoulder. At first he thought he’d pulled a muscle. It wouldn’t go away. His doctor prescribed anti-inflammatories to no avail. Unsure of what was causing the pain, his doctor sought a referral to a consultant a year ago, so that Kevin could be admitted to hospital for exploratory tests. Kevin is still waiting. In the interim, he spent a stressful day in A&E last May, when the pain in his arm got worse and he feared a heart attack.

“I was told by the doctor in charge that I was wasting his time, that I wasn’t an A&E patient. I told him my own doctor was booked out and I had no choice but to go to A&E. He said I was not an emergency case. I felt quite hurt.”

The next day, Kevin rang the consultant with whom his doctor had sought an appointment.

On asking how much longer he was likely to be waiting to be seen, the consultant’s secretary said “there are about 700 people ahead of you”. He has little faith in the health services.

“I was in hospital one day with a pain in my chest. I needed to see a specialist.

“I was told he could not come from another hospital to the hospital I was in until there were four patients present with chest pain. Only then would his visit be justified. How can you justify that?”