Experts warn Harney over private sector
Health Minister Mary Harney believes public-private partnerships which would create more bed capacity are the way to tackle our chronic hospital waiting lists and A&E crisis.
But Professor Allyson Pollock, chair of health policy and health service research at University College London, said: “Once Ms Harney unleashes the private sector into the Irish health system there will be no pulling back - it will become a Pandora’s Box.”
Prof Pollock said that the British experience of privatised medicine has shown that once market forces are brought in, there are big winners and losers.
“The private sector only wants to cherry-pick the profitable patient treatments, like joint replacements, gall bladders and hernia - these are winners for them,” Prof Pollock told the fourth Population Health Summer School at UCC. She said the big losers are chronically sick patients like those suffering from asthma, diabetes, arthritis and bronchitis who are relegated to the public hospital service.
She added that in Britain the private sector: “Has brought inequalities, access to service based on ability to pay and a huge fear among those who cannot afford to pay.”
And she warned that Britain was in danger of becoming like the US, where 50 million people have no health cover.
Professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Martin McKee, also appealed to the Tánaiste not to privatise Irish medicine.
“Mary Harney needs to think carefully of the consequence of public/private partnerships - my advice to her is to retain a State-funded health service, it will be cheaper in the long run,” he added.
Ms Harney’s spokesman could not be reached for comment at the time of going to press.
