Report says government ‘privatising’ health

THE Government has misled the public on how much it has spent on the health service, it has failed to meet healthcare promises made in the 2002 election and wants to waste taxpayers’ money on a private system, which will mean greater inequality.

These are just some of the findings of Addressing the Health Care Crisis, a joint report by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and Siptu into Ireland’s health service problems.

The report said the Government has established a Health Service Executive (HSE) that has taken the last remnant of democracy out of the health service. And that HSE is now controlling 95% of capital and current expenditure, yet it would not appear to be accountable to anyone.

The report’s author, Sara Burke said Ireland needs 400 additional new public hospital beds, every year up to 2013, along with the additional doctors, nurses and other frontline staff necessary to staff them.

To compliment the bed increase, she said there needs to be just one waiting list for all patients and an end to designating patients as public or private, within all public facilities.

The whole privatisation of the health service is condemned in the report with claims that private hospitals cannot and do not provide the same level of care as in the public system, yet it is the taxpayer who is bearing a large chunk of the cost for their development and operation.

“When Health Minister Mary Harney launched the ‘co-location initiative’, her stated aim was to free up 1,000 private beds in the public system by effectively relocating them to the new (subsidised) facilities. The plan was announced as being ‘cost-free’ to the exchequer, until it was pointed out that the tax breaks could result in a bill of more than €400 million. And to this sum should be added the cost of the public land on which the new facilities will be constructed.”

The report also raises broken promises by the Government in its 2002 election campaign.

It said Fianna Fáil promised 3,000 more beds in hospitals, 2,800 of which were to be inpatient beds, an end to waiting times of longer than three months for surgical or medical treatment in hospital by 2004 and increased staffing for the health services.

However, according to Siptu and Ictu, a mere 724 additional beds were created by 2005, at the start of 2007, 69% of adults were waiting more than six months for surgical procedures and a cap on health sector employment in 2002 leading to the closure of wards and the crippling of some public services.

However, the HSE rejected claims in the report saying the figures were out of date and that it is accountable to the Health Minister and also to the Oireachtas.

“Furthermore, senior HSE officials regularly appear before the Oireachtas Joint Health Committee to account to public representatives for the provision and level of our complex variety of services,” it said.