Medical card bill defies logic
The bill is defective because the means test to get a card is based on gross income and not net income.
The effect of this is that my widowed 99-year-old relative will lose her medical card. She is paying more than €40,000 per annum for her nursing care in a private nursing home at no cost to the State. Her gross income is over the limit for a single person for a medical card (€36,400 per annum) because of the bank interest she receives from the sale proceeds of her family home, added to her garda widow’s pension.
She had to sell her family home to pay for her care and is now being penalised for that. Bizarrely, if deposit interest goes down to 1%, she will regain her medical card.
She is doubly punished because she gave up her VHI insurance in the legitimate expectation that she would have a medical card for the rest of her life.
The bill defies logic because it does recognise the concept of ‘net income’ when dealing with income from rented property. Another defect in the bill is that it does not permit a married couple (or a couple living together) to be means tested on an individual basis, as is permitted as an option under income tax legislation. Such a provision would ensure in many cases that one of the two — mainly the woman — would be eligible for a medical card.
The bill is not properly thought out. The opportunity to retain the universal right to a medical card for the over-70s has been lost.
If the medical card had been treated as a benefit-in-kind for persons with a net income above a specified amount, it would have been fairer and would have eliminated the current anomalies in the bill. It would also have removed the inefficient HSE from means testing and left it to the efficient revenue commissioners who, after all, are with us through life and thereafter.
The Minister for Health should go back to the drawing board.
Henry Murdoch BL
Haddington Lawn
Glenageary
Co Dublin
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