Privatising health - No ‘magic bullet’ for healthcare

Injecting tax incentives into profit-making health service schemes is not in the interest of public health, because it will not fix the problems now besetting our health service, according to consultant neurologist Orla Hardiman, of Beaumont Hospital.

Dr Hardiman insists that the Government is wasting public money on a “for profit” healthcare system when the public health service is understaffed and handicapped with inadequate equipment, due to the allocation of insufficient funds.

Dr Hardiman argues that the health service is constantly playing catch-up as a result of the inadequate funding. It cannot plan properly, as it has to plan reactively in view of persistent deficiencies, rather than proactively with a view to tackling future problems after having rectified current difficulties.

Comhairle na nOispidéal recommended in a 2003 report that there should be 39 neurologists in this country, but there is still less than half that number. Yet the overall number required has actually increased, as a result of the unexpected population boost of recent years.

There has been no new neurologist consultant appointed at Beaumont Hospital since Dr Hardiman’s appointment 11 years ago.

There are currently just three neurologists there instead of the required eight. This has resulted in massive problems in treating patients with epilepsy. They have to go on a two-year waiting list for treatment.

There are up to 400,000 people in the country in need of some form of neurological care, due to strokes, migraine, epilepsy, or neuro-degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and dementia, which become more prevalent as people get older.

These problems are going to increase with the age profile of our population and a longer-life expectancy. To suggest that the care being provided is “sub-optimal” is a gross understatement of the problem.

“Patients get terrible care because there is a very long waiting list in neurology,” Dr Hardiman contends.

The Government has been behaving as if the privatisation of health care is going to provide some kind of panacea, or magic bullet, to resolve the problems.

Promoting the privatisation of healthcare would be much more expensive, but there is no evidence that it would be more effective.

Expenditure on private medicine in Sweden is only 1.4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and comparatively similar in Japan, whereas it is 8% of GDP in the US. But the infant mortality rates in Sweden and Japan are the lowest in the world, whereas the US ranks in 18th position. At the other end of the lifecycle, life expectancy in the US is 77 years, in comparison with 80 years in Sweden and 81.4 years in Japan.

Those statistics suggest that privatisation would cost the public more and be less effective on a national basis. That would make neither economic nor medical sense.