Health services - Crisis gets ever closer

It is hard to argue against the idea that our health services are approaching some sort of day of reckoning, some sort cathartic crisis.

Acute hospitals will get around €200m less in State funding this year than last. Another health insurance provider is to increase premiums — this time it’s Laya by around 20%. VHI already announced a smaller increase this week.

All the while health managers and consultants argue that posts cannot be filled because Irish wages and working conditions are not on a par with international alternatives. Home help hours are almost routinely slashed. Nurses emigrate. Waiting lists grow. While these symptoms of collapse are all around us Government assures us that schemes like free GP care will be delivered. There is a deeply worrying air of Alice in Wonderland about all of this as it is so very obvious that our current arrangements are utterly unsustainable.