Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not believe in health insurance at all. As I listened to the discussion with Deputy Naughten and heard about all the problems and anomalies that can develop, it made me realise what a load of nonsense it all is. It is the irrational working out of a two-tier system in which one gets better health cover if one has money than if one does not. That is a rotten idea. Universal health insurance sounds good, but the key word is “insurance”. What the public hear is “universal health”, and they like the sound of that, but they do not get the bit at the end - that is, “insurance” - which involves private insurance companies that want to make money. That is the real agenda. The extreme manifestation of the system is in the United States, where more money is spent on health than anywhere else yet tens of millions of people do not get proper health cover because vast amounts of money are eaten up by the private health insurance companies in administration and billing. It is a complete waste and has nothing to do with delivering health care.

In principle, I am against all of that. However, we must deal with the sad reality that the alternative to privatising the provision of health care via the insurance market is a national health system which is paid for through progressive taxation based on one’s ability to pay. It is simple, because the money comes out of income tax and one does not have administration, the billing, the waste, and all the millions spent on advertising or corporate branding, none of which has anything to do with health. One just gets the health service. Is it not blatantly obvious that such a system would be far better? However, we do not do that. What we are doing is slashing the public health system and forcing people who would much rather go to a decent public hospital and not have to wait on a trolley or spend a year on a waiting list for a procedure to take out health insurance that they cannot really afford because they are terrified of having to deal with the bargain-basement version of health care that one gets in the public system.

Ironically, in a way, the Government then goes after those people. It punishes them for taking out an insurance policy against having to deal with the chaos the Government has left in the public health system. The Government then hits such people, which is rotten. It is another significant hit for people whom even Fine Gael purport to represent. My amendment is an attempt to minimise the damage the Government is doing and the cost that will be imposed on people. I agree with Deputy Naughten that this measure will tip many people over the edge and they will not be able to afford health insurance any more. In many cases, such people will not go to hospital when they are sick. They will hold back. Many people are doing that already because it just costs too much. Because they do not have a medical card they do not go to the doctor, or else they wait until they are really in pain or more sick than they would otherwise have been if they had not had to take into account the financial imposition involved in going to hospital. The measure is completely retrograde. My amendment is merely an attempt to minimise the damage. This is another example of how the Government must completely reassess its thinking on how we provide a health service.

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