Playing hardball with lives of sick people

HERE we go again. Would the Minister for Health and the Irish Pharmaceutical Union ever stop playing hardball with sick people’s lives? Time is running out in the latest stand-off.

I resent being used as a political football. As usual, the patient is the lowest form of life at the end of the medicine chain.

I depend on very expensive medicines for some quality of life. I simply cannot afford to pay their commercial price. I still could not afford to pay it even if I were four times better off.

After a lifetime of hard work and voluntary service, is it too much to ask for even a little happiness in my golden years? I should not have to demand it.

It is my most basic human right.

I am worried sick by the spin of monetary cynicism and the threat that my lifesaving medicines might be withheld. It amounts to gross abuse of the most vulnerable people in our society.

I am going public on this for the thousands of sick poor people who have no one to speak up for them. Please stop playing brinkmanship.

Michael Mernagh

Raheens

Carrigaline

Co Cork