Medical card used as political fodder

I HAVE been in medicine for 36 years in a consultant capacity and I have never witnessed such a low dastardly stroke pulled by any government as that perpetrated by this one in using the medical card as political fodder to cover health department incompetence.

Health Minister Mary Harney had to be the author of this stunt as she has a total inability to engage the medical profession on the anomalies of contracts both for the hospital-based services and the primary GP healthcare services.

Now she has set up a third firewall protection by using the over-70s’ medical card-holders as political ammunition to throw at the doctors for the inability of the Department of Health to negotiate proper financial conditions.

1. She hides behind the department blaming the HSE for problems.

2. She hides behind the HSE when the department is at fault

3. Through the budget she had the effrontery to indulge in medical card scaremongering in order to hide the real political agenda of reining in the confetti money deals done by the Fianna Fáil government to buy the 2002 general election.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan was hailed as the man who rescued the banks.

Now we see the political vandalism he attempted to exact on the elderly and is apparently still going to exact on our schoolchildren. They say a political scoundrel wraps himself in the flag when all else fails.

Peter M Thorpe

Árd na Gréine

Ballyclough

Mallow

Co Cork.