Medical card bill defies logic

THE Health Bill 2008, currently before the Oireachtas, proposes to eliminate the universal right of the over-70s to a medical card.

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.