Pursuit of profit hurts the elderly

THIS week’s Prime Time programme exposing how elderly people are abused and humiliated when they receive home care (or not) from private companies, paid by the Irish taxpayer via the HSE, illustrates what happens when policies are driven by a right-wing ideology instead of the interests of people needing care.

Prime Time revealed that there was no regulation of these private companies. It is easy to understand why. If you want to privatise home care you have to make it a good prospect for private companies, especially American healthcare companies. These companies shy away from regulation, because they know that it will be difficult to do what we saw being done in the Prime Time programme; using untrained, uninvestigated staff and setting a low time limit for the carer to stay in the client’s home. Training costs the company money and reduces profits. Allowing the carer to stay in the client’s home for as long as necessary cost money and reduces profits. Private healthcare is all about making profit. So by not regulating this sector, those responsible for farming out homecare are assuring private companies that profits will be made.

Another thing that helps private companies is to reduce competition from the public health service, by embargoing recruitment of HSE staff, which is what has happened. 90% of home care is provided by the HSE. The reason the other 10% isn’t provided is because the HSE is short of staff to provide home care. It can be seen now how, with embargoes on recruitment and no regulation, the private sector will take over more and more of the home care sector.