TDs raise concern over potential reimbursement cuts for cataract operations

Michael Collins TD speaking with passenger Don Payne on the Belfast or Blind bus, bringing patents to Kingsbridge Private Hospital in Northern Ireland for surgery under the cross-border directive. Picture: David Creedon

As another busload of people prepare to travel to Belfast for potentially sight-saving cataract operations, concern has been expressed that the State may only reimburse future recipients €800 of the cost rather than the usual €1,900.

Michael Collins, the Cork TD who launched the Cataracts Express service to enable people on long waiting lists to get the operations, says his office has been told that the amount to be reimbursed is being cut.

He and Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae raised the issue with the Taoiseach in the Dáil. Simon Harris told them he would make "specific inquiries" on the matter and come back to them.

The cut from €1,900 to €800 in the reimbursement was put to the HSE. It would not comment on those specific figures. It said: “Ireland is obliged to reimburse people."

The HSE said the amount is "whichever of these is less: The total cost of healthcare in the treating state or the total cost of healthcare if it had been provided in Ireland".

Cork TD Michael Collins said he was thinking of raising the matter with the HSE as a matter of urgency. Picture: Sam Boal /Rollingnews.ie

The Irish Examiner has established that, while the cost of a cataract operation in the private sector is between €2,500 and €3,000 north and south of the border, the operation costs are around €2,000 if done publicly in the Republic.

Mr Collins said: “We have been told that, as of the beginning of the month, only around €800 will be reimbursed.

This is an astonishing act of unkindness towards vulnerable people, most of them elderly, who desperately need cataract operations on their eyes

“I am genuinely shocked to hear what has happened, and I am taking the matter up with the HSE as a matter of urgency, as this means anybody who can’t afford to make up the funding shortfall will have to remain on waiting lists.” 

Last month saw the return of the 152nd Cataracts Express service between Belfast and Cork.

People attend private hospitals in the North to avail of the Northern Ireland Planned Healthcare Scheme.

Since December 2017, the coaches have taken around 4,000 people to Belfast’s Kingsbridge Private Hospital for operations to remove cataracts.

These are the cloudy patches that develop on the lens inside the eye, that eventually get larger and cause eyes to blur and mist over and — eventually — cause blindness.

People on the service, which is also known as the Belfast or Blind bus service, are mostly people who have been waiting years to get treatment and are finally starting to go blind, because they have been waiting too long.

Instead of such a service being regularly run by the health service itself, which is responsible for managing the country’s long waiting lists, it is instead run by Mr Collins and Kerry TD Danny Healy-Rae.