Harney health plan fails to deliver

THERE has been much debate recently regarding hospital co-location.

It is clear that Mary Harney is spinning the plan to communicate that it benefits public patients more, using the argument that private patients would need less public beds under such a scheme. However, the plan should not be described as being the most beneficial one for public or private patients.

People pay for voluntary health insurance on the basis that they expect to receive a better standard of care as a result. Therefore, any scheme to create more private hospitals for private patients would obviously lead to the expectation that such hospitals would provide superior healthcare to public hospitals.

If such private hospitals developed a reputation for being no better than public hospitals, then the incentive to subscribe to voluntary health insurance would disappear. On that basis, it should be fully expected that co-located private hospitals would effectively be prioritised for funding and facilities above public hospitals. This has huge implications. The health service is already two-tiered and the co-location plan would further segregate the health service. It was noted in the Irish Examiner on May 17 (Co-location ‘could cost taxpayers €1bn’) that co-located private clinics could cost the State over €1bn over seven years.

Ms Harney has already admitted that public hospitals will lose €80 million in private health insurance payments per annum that will go to new co-located hospitals instead.

As a result of co-location, funds will be taken from the taxpayer and turned, naturally, into private profits, when they could instead be retained within the public heath service. €1bn could be used to create more than 2,300 public beds; a lot more than the projected 1000 private beds the co-located plan is supposed to result in. Ms Harney should not be so keen to apply her personal convictions on free market economics to Ireland’s health service. She should look from the angle of what is best for the State as a whole. Such an approach means, as much as is possible, ensuring every citizen has an equitable right to healthcare, and that means moving to a system of universal health insurance.

John Kennedy

Knocknashee

Goatstown

Dublin 14