Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Trade union action on behalf of working people in the public and private sectors is fully justifiable, given the pay cuts of recent times and the sharply rising cost of rent, car insurance and, as we are debating tonight, health insurance etc. This Bill underlines the urgent need to establish an Irish national health service to provide universal health care that is free at the point of use and is funded from general taxation. An Irish NHS would represent a sharp break with the current health service model, which is increasingly based on and relies on the for-profit element. An Irish NHS should draw from the experience of the model used in Canada, where private practice is illegal in most areas. This eliminates the need for private health insurance. I understand that a health expert, Professor Charles Normand, has estimated that the cost of replacing health care covered by private health insurance with public spending would be between 5% and 7% of total health spending, or between 7% and 10% of current public health spending. We could close this gap and widen the basket of services significantly beyond the level of service currently covered by health insurance premiums by introducing a genuinely progressive tax system that makes the super wealthy in this society pay tax bills which correspond with reality. Even though 46% of people had private health insurance at the end of last year, the private health insurance system contributes a mere 9% to the overall cost of health care. By contrast, the State pays a whopping 77%. A health expert, Dr. Sara Burke, said recently that "this shows that the public system is subsidising the private system". It also shows how inefficient reliance on the private health insurance model actually is. It gives us an idea of the level of profit-gouging that is being carried out by the insurance corporations. The scandal of health insurance profiteering further underlines the merit of the clear and overwhelming case for an Irish national health service.

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