Harney ‘deceit’ over medical cards

OPPOSITION parties have accused Health Minister Mary Harney of lying about the number of people on medical cards.

Labour health spokesperson Liz McManus yesterday said the Tánaiste was “continuing to misrepresent the Government’s decision on medical cards in a manner that can only be regarded as deliberately untruthful and deceitful.”

She was referring to the €60 million provision in the Health Estimates to extend the full medical card next year to another 30,000 people and to offer a “doctor visit only” card to an additional 200,000.

Ms Harney claims this will put the proportion of the population on medical cards at its highest level since 1995. Ms Manus disputes this, arguing the doctor-only card will not entitle the holder to the free prescription drugs or overnight hospital stays that a full card covers.

“The services that will be available to those who will be getting the new ‘yellow pack’ GP cards will not be anything like those that were available to 200,000 people who have had their medical cards taken away since 1997,” Ms McManus said.

She was referring to those who lost cards when they exceeded the income threshold which guarantees medical card eligibility.

When asked yesterday on RTÉ’s This Week programme if substantially more people would lose their medical cards when the minimum wage rises next April, Ms Harney said she didn’t believe everyone should have an automatic entitlement to a medical card.

“The medical card is based on need and clearly we haven’t a universal system. We don’t give it to everybody and I don’t believe you should, because we have to target resources to those that need them most.”

She defended the Government’s decision to give everyone over the age of 70 a medical card, and said there were no plans to reverse this decision.

“One thing I will say is if you give somebody a service you don’t withdraw it; people become dependent on it, people change their lifestyle pattern based on this service. Over-70s don’t abuse anything.”

Fine Gael health spokesperson Dr Liam Twomey TD, who first touted the idea of the doctor visit card, called on the Tánaiste to ensure the cards were a short-term measure.

“It is crucial that these doctor-visit medical cards are upgraded to full medical cards at a later stage,” he said.