Were they trying to dodge the EU patients’ charter?

THE medical cards debacle reveals a further stripping of humanity from Government policy.

The contrast could not have been clearer — hundreds of billions in guarantees to prop up the banks one week and the removal of medical care to old people the next.

But how did it come to this?

Is it that too many ministers are unable to relate to the problems of the average person? Given their backgrounds and positions, they felt comfortable handling the ample moneys of Celtic Tiger, but even then they managed to ignore the suffering of the underprivileged.

Because of the catastrophic drop in revenues the Government was looking for new savings and revenue sources.

In this context, removal of the automatic medical card entitlement to the over-70s was bizarre yet consistent, especially as it was done at the same time as the Government proposed its own subprime mortgage programme at a cost of €1.6 billion. We needed a creative but fair budget. Instead we got the same old formula — money for a few from the many and deprivation for the most vulnerable.

But maybe there is more to removing the automatic entitlement to medical cards than mean-spirited spending cuts.

Is it possible that the Government, following the progress of the EU patients’ rights/cross-border directive in Brussels, is preparing our health system to minimise its impact in Ireland.

Of course, the only responsible preparation for these sweeping directives is to make our health service function properly.

However, nothing in my experience of this or previous governments makes me hope that bringing the health service up to scratch is the preparation they will make.

Under the patients’ rights/cross-border directive Irish patients in need of treatment who cannot get it, or not get it in a reasonable time, will be able to get their medical records on request and travel to any other EU member state for the treatment in a public or private medical facility. They are entitled then to have it paid for by the Irish health system to the extent that it would have been paid in Ireland.

Under this system a medical card will no longer be a ticket to a three-year waiting list but a ticket to prompt treatment in a country like France with well run, big-capacity public hospitals or subsidised treatment in a sunny private clinic in Spain.

With the state of the Irish hospitals it is not hard to predict a mass exodus and, in this context, the Government — especially Mary Harney who sits on the Council of Health Ministers in Brussels — may well consider automatic medical cards for the over 70s a huge liability.

Kathy Sinnott MEP

‘St Joseph’

Ballinabearna

Ballinhassig

Co Cork