Letters to the Editor: Hospitals scalping private insurance must stop

Michael Healy-Rae said hares used for coursing are properly treated.

Re: Hospitals ‘asking’ for waiver of public care (Insured patients warned not to waive right to public care, Irish Examiner, August 1).

I have (twice) been sent forms for signing weeks and months after the procedures were done from one of the multiple hospitals I’ve attended in recent times.

I have had scans, tests, biopsies, and several procedures for both prostate cancer and separately for lymphoma. I have also had a number of further procedures as a participant in colon/bowel screening programme.

Some of the above started out as a public patient, which subsequently converted to private as a result of my signing one of many forms presented to me at various dates. 

As a result, I am now required to pay the consultant myself (in cash) for each follow-up appointment. Because I have private health insurance, I can recoup 75% of these payments. I am still left to find the balance myself after over 40 years paying the highest rate of PRSI throughout.

I never claimed a day’s unemployment payment in my life and the only benefits I have claimed for are due to the above cancer treatments the past two and a half years.

The practice of hospitals scalping private insurance providers must be stopped. The fact it remains is the same logic behind hospitals being allowed charge patients and families for car-parking while receiving treatment or visiting. 

All money taken in from car-parking and waiver of private care “subsidises/supplements” central Government HSE/Department of Health budget figures.

The HSE medical staff are true heroes. Hospital managers and bean-counters are doing a completely different job, divorced from real-world caring as should be the primary case in all healthcare settings.

It’s a great little country alright.

Gerry Carroll

Drogheda

Co Louth

How is the war in Ukraine to end?

The letter to the Irish Times from Sabina Higgins has drawn much attention. Some have seen it as suggesting Ukraine and Russia are in some way equally responsible for the war which is now raging. In particular, the fact Russia launched this criminal attack is absent from the letter.

However, the thrust of her letter is correct. There seems to be no wish to discuss how this war can be brought to an end. Nor is there much interest in looking at the role that the US and Nato have played in it.

Many influential Western leaders and opinion makers have over the years expressed their worry about the continued expansion of Nato. 

In an open letter to US president Bill Clinton in 1997, 50 important political and diplomatic figures expressed their concern that this expansion would cause resentment in Russia and backfire badly. 

Henry Kissinger — a war criminal himself, who puts Putin in the shade — and others have expressed similar views since then.

Unfortunately, these views find little support in the US State Department or White House and the overall impression given — Anthony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, for example — is that they see this war as an opportunity to weaken Russia.

'We are told any concessions will only embolden Putin in attacking other countries.' Picture: Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

Certainly the Americans made no effort to ensure the Minsk agreement — a perfect template to avoid war — was implemented. One suspects they in fact did all they could to ensure it was not implemented.

In any case, we have now had more than 160 days of war. How is it to end? True, despite the fact that Nato and the US share some responsibility for it, it was Putin’s gang who actually invaded. Thus we are told any concessions will only embolden Putin in attacking other countries.

Really? A country with an economy the size of Italy’s which has completely failed in its attempt to take Kyiv and is struggling to take cities most people have never heard of?

The reality is this. Crimea is gone. An attempt to take it back would be resisted by the majority of its pro-Russian population and would require extreme violence from the Ukrainian government, of the kind which was so destructive in the Donbas. 

The breakaway parts of the Donbas are probably gone too. Its population, which mainly had a Soviet — rather than specifically Russian — identity, based on its coalmining heyday, had accepted its Ukrainian status until 2014 but it is unlikely they will do so ever again.

This may be unpalatable to many and may seem like rewarding aggression, but facing up to these facts is essential if peace is to come.

Otherwise, much of Ukraine may end up like Syria, there will be food shortages and famine in many countries and the risk of nuclear war hangs over everything.

Brian Hanney

Shantalla

Galway

Proper treatment for all animals

I am astonished at Michael Healy-Rae’s comment that hares are properly treated “all the time” at coursing meetings. Firstly, the hare is a protected species in Ireland. Secondly, it appears a solitary creature outside of breeding season. So how is netting, capturing, transporting, caging, hunting, and frightening an animal to death, along with potentially injuring it, proper treatment for any animal?

Margaret O’Connor

Millstreet

Co Cork

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael need to deliver

Brilliantly written and balanced article by Fergus Finlay (‘It looks like nothing will stop Sinn Féin coming to power’, Irish Examiner, August 2). 

However, I still believe that if Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael deliver to middle Ireland as they have promised to do (again) by cutting taxes, etc, they will enjoy many more years of managing Ireland. 

If they decide to deliver on their promises they need to start shouting this from the highest trees now, as middle Ireland feels suppressed during the last number of years.

John Cribben

Rathfarnham

Labour as a flag of convenience

I understand what it must be like to be a member of the Labour Party at the present time. The realisation that the people are not going to forget very quickly the most recent act of betrayal by that party when in coalition with Fine Gael must sting deeply.

But Fergus Finlay really needs to grow up and stop with the dog-whistling attacks on the party that has stepped so effortlessly into the clothes the leaders of his party so carelessly left lying around. 

(‘It looks like nothing will stop Sinn Féin coming to power’, Irish Examiner, August 2)

Next, instead of hiding behind a dodgy “focus group” thinking out loud about the current political situation as camouflage to vent his spleen, he should spend that time honestly seeking out the reasons for his party’s
demise and, after a profuse apology, advocate for the putting in place the people and organisation capable of living up to the principles and ideals of the party’s founders.

A good start would be to put in place procedures that would quickly identify careerists who join the party purely to use it as a flag of convenience to get themselves a spot on the gravy train.

Jim O’Sullivan

Rathedmond,

Sligo

Sinn Féin have too much baggage

Albeit Sinn Féin are high in the polls, I think and hope when people go to the ballot box they will think twice and then hopefully realise that Sinn Féin still have too much baggage to allow them access to the wheels of power.

Kevin Keegan

Drogheda

Co Louth

High cost of car hire

In the earlier part of this year, I decided it was time for another trip to West Cork to assuage my need for a good dollop of the craic in the various pubs around Clonakilty.

I felt five days would be about right as I intend to visit in September in any event. 

I visited the usual comparison sites and up popped a figure of €98 for Palma airport as I hire a car twice a year in Mallorca. The figure then popped up for Cork Airport which was €488. Guess where I went?

Your article saying car hire prices are keeping tourists away was spot on, particularly those with no Irish connections. You cannot put me off though. To quote MacArthur: “I shall return.”

Paul Grainger

Chadderton

Oldham

UK