Funding hospitals - Send in the consultants

DESPITE all the readjustments and savings, the government is to pay consultants to consider the issues surrounding private health insurance.

Whether this follows on last week’s Supreme Court ruling that risk equalisation could not continue is irrelevant but is another indication that the ideological crusade led by Health Minister Mary Harney to privatise sections of our health service may fall because the figures don’t add up.

Even without the court ruling the financial assumptions supporting co-location looked flimsy. Pivotal investors are in talks with the government to have taxpayers assume a greater level of risk if the project fails. The investors must not get those assurances.

What is it about mandatory, universal health insurance and an efficient public health service that is so unacceptable to Ms Harney? Does she believe that such an arrangement is unattainable? Why does her department have to employ consultants to get answers about health insurance? As ever with Ms Harney there are far more questions than answers.