Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As part of this discussion, we need to look at where we are today and what has happened with our health system to date. We have a system that has been cut to the bone and a very demoralised workforce. The main problem for people is that it is very hard to get through the door. Once one is through that door, the staff look after one and one receives exemplary care. It is the wrong system.

I was also astounded listening to some of the contributions from our Labour Party Deputies about where universal health insurance will bring us and about how it will give us a single tier system based on the NHS because I also think we need to look at this system. The NHS was brought into being in the United Kingdom during one of the most traumatic economic periods in the country's period. Under this system, everyone has access at point of entry. This is what we should be moving towards. Instead, the Minister and the Government are bringing in a system based on insurance and competition. Competition will drive down costs at the expense of quality of care.

There are other options that can be looked. The Adelaide Hospital Society reported in 2008 that one of the ways would be to bring in universal medical cards, which would probably cost about €217 million. I note that in a previous life, Labour Party Members lauded the fact that the over 70s automatically got a medical card. Now that children under six are to get free GP care, more people over 70 are coming in to my office whose medical cards are being cut because they have just over €500 in income as an individual. The reality is that this €500 income limit does not take into account tax, the universal social charge, PRSI or house insurance. These people have been told to reapply under the general medical card scheme, which denies them access to it and causes huge distress to elderly people in the community. In a previous life, the Labour Party expounded on the role of the over 70s medical card and stated that it should be universally used throughout the system. People's health and the economy benefit in the longer term because people are not using the service as much and are able to access it when it is necessary.

The system we are bringing in will benefit private insurance companies at the cost of both care in our hospitals and GP services. It annoyed me when I heard a Deputy talk about self-interest on the part of GPs in respect of medical cards for children under six. This is not the case. Based on my information, including information from my GP, whom I have known for nearly 40 years, GPs are very concerned that they will be overwhelmed by the potential extra resources they will need to put in to deal with this. Before anything is done and before the Minister brings in these changes, they must be resourced properly, but they are not resourced properly. A so-called gagging order has been introduced where doctors cannot come out and say they have problems with free care for children under six. One cannot say it is because they are interested in what is going into their pockets, which is quite a nasty thing to say about people who are very concerned about the health and well-being of their patients.

Private health insurance is about queue jumping and getting into the system as quickly as possible. This should not be the case. We should be directing all our ideas into setting up a health care system that has access based on progressive taxation to allow everyone to have access to a health service based on need and not on ability to pay.

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