IMO: HSE could easily restore lost medical cards

Medical cards could easily be restored to the thousands who had already lost them before the review process was halted last week, according to the chairman of the GP Committee of the Irish Medical Organisation.

Dr Ray Walley contradicted suggestions by the HSE that it would not be logistically possible to immediately restore thousands of discretionary cards which were taken away from children with Down Syndrome and people with serious illnesses or disabilities through a review process that has been taking place over the past two years.

He said family doctors, through a computer system, could reinstate eligibility on an emergency basis in what would be a “very quick” process and policy makers could then sit down to figure out who should get cards based on their medical conditions.

“Care needs to be provided on the basis of medical needs,” he said. “There is no evidence-based medicine out there that indicates that 240,00 under sixes are being disenfranchised.”

He said the €37 million being collected through a tax levy on prescriptions should be used to provide the cover for discretionary cards.

Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte said the latest medical card probity exercise was a “Government decision” at the time of the last budget “in order to protect education and in particular social welfare”.

Defending the role of the Junior Minister with responsibility for the system, Alex White, who is also contesting the Labour Party leadership, Mr Rabbitte said: “It was a Government decision, €113m was finally agreed in the negotiations, through probity measures. Nobody was very clear at the time what exactly they were. “To say that the Junior Minister in the Department is responsible; he’s responsible for doing what he’s told by the Government. It was a cabinet decision.”

He also said there was “quite a lot of people who didn’t bother engaging to reply” with the review process — based on figures showing around 10,000 people lost their cards last years as a result of not producing the correct documentation or not producing any at all when asked to by the HSE.

“It is very fair to criticise the Government for taking so long to respond to a number of cases in which nobody could defend the card being taken away, and the manor and tenor of the correspondence that they got,” he said.

“But is it unreasonable — given the straits that we are in — that the situation ought to be examined,” he asked. “The manner of its doing is another issue, but is it not reasonable when there was quite a lot of people who didn’t even bother engaging to reply.”

When it was put to him that many did not provide the necessary material because they were incapable due to ill health, learning disabilities or dementia, he said: “That may be so, but you can’t say either that a lot of them who didn’t reply were not entitled to have a card.”