Robbie Keane joins 65,000 to sign medical card petition

A campaign group fighting for medical card reforms is to hand a 65,000-strong petition into the Oireachtas health committee today in a bid to speed up promised changes to the system.

Our Children’s Health, which was last week named on the HSE’s special 12-person group to further detail what changes are needed, will provide the document to the cross-party committee this morning after claiming last week few if any Government reforms have been implemented.

The petition, which includes the support of Irish international soccer captain Robbie Keane and has seen an “upsurge” in names in recent days, will be handed in by 18-month old Ryan Gilmartin.

Despite Taoiseach Enda Kenny intervening in his case last November, Ryan —who has Down syndrome and is from Mr Kenny’s own constituency — has been turned down on three separate occasions and is in the dark over the outcome of his current application.

The petition being handed in is seeking faster access to discretionary medical cards and immediate help for children with serious conditions. It was originally set up last May at www.ourchildrenshealth.ie by Peter Fitzpatrick and his brother-in-law Kevin Shortall, whose daughter Louise was battling leukaemia, in order to highlight the then discretionary medical card crisis.

It subsequently played a key role in forcing a Government U-turn on admitting there are problems in the system.

After promises were made to act on the calls for action, last November Leo Varadkar, the health minister, published the Keane report which put forward a series of planned changes to improve access to the vital service.

They included a 10-point plan to ensure people with serious or terminal conditions are not subjected to reviews if they currently hold a card; GPs have the power to extend cards in difficult circumstances; and to pay further attention to the “burden of disease” on a family, rather than simply financial issues.

However, despite Mr Varadkar pointing out that the changes have come at a time when the number of people who hold a discretionary medical card has risen from 50,294 last summer to 76,000 today, Our Children’s Health say little has changed.

Mr Fitzpatrick said the purpose of the medical card petition is to refocus political debate on the issue and claimed there are clear examples of children being denied a medical card.

Last week the campaigner revealed the family of a four-year-old cancer patient who was turned down for a discretionary medical card is being pursued by a Midlands hospital debt collector for a €1,000 bill.

The following day, Mr Fitzpatrick was asked to be one of two patient representatives on the HSE’s 12-strong independent medical card reforms clinical advisory group.

This group, which is due to meet for the first time next week, has been tasked with putting in place a work- able system for assessing “burden of disease” issues and “operational guidelines” for HSE officials when they decide on medical card applications.