Doctors, state argue over blame in €51m overrun

A MAJOR row broke out between doctors and the Department of Health last night over who is to blame for the €51 million budget over-run in the medical card scheme.

The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) blamed the Department because they said it had completely underestimated the numbers of over-70s who would qualify for the medical card.

IMO spokesman Dr Ronan Boland said the Department’s budget for the new scheme was based on 39,000 over-70s applying for the medical card whereas over 70,000 ended up getting it.

“Any suggestion that millions were overpaid to doctors is grossly misleading. The real cause for the budget overrun was the massive miscalculation on the part of the Department on the numbers who would actually qualify for the new medical card,” Dr Boland added.

But the Department rejected this claim and said the main reason for the major budget over-run was that GPs were paid for treating almost 20,000 deceased or ineligible people.

“We are not saying this was the GPs’ fault but this extra money was paid out because the system did not pick up the error,” a Department spokeswoman said.

While the Department spokesperson accepted they completely underestimated the number of over-70s who would qualify for the medical card, she claimed this would only account for a quarter of the huge budget over-run.

“An internal investigation has revealed that GPs were paid for treating around 20,000 people with duplicate medical cards or the deceased and this is the main cause of the budget over-run,” the Department spokeswoman added.

But, Dr Boland asked, “How can they say we were paid for treating dead people when any over-70 who qualified for the new scheme would have had to sign up in person for it?”

Health Minister Micheál Martin is insisting doctors will have to repay any money owed and also ordered a root and branch review of the entire medical card scheme.

But the IMO believes most doctors will not have to make any repayments because the money they owe will be cancelled out by money they are owed by Health Boards for treating new-born babies.