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

I fundamentally object to the health needs of humans being referred to as a market. Our State has an obligation to provide health care as a matter of human right to our citizens. There is an idea that a market has sprung up because we have been unable to do this, because we have underfunded our health service, inflicted savage cuts on it and slaughtered staff numbers and the budget and, consequently, have driven more and more people out of fear to take out private health insurance, in the hope they can skip a queue when they really need to. There should not be a queue, but if there is a queue, people out of fear and anxiety will seek to get up the queue when they are sick and vulnerable and need help. It is the failure of the political system to establish a national health system with cradle to grave health care of the highest quality as a matter of right for our citizens that has spawned this rotten profiteering parasitical two-tier system.

We saw the extreme end of that with incredibly well-paid private consultants not even doing the hours they are supposed to do. In case anybody gets me wrong, I am aware that there are many decent consultants who would not do that. However, we create the conditions for that and we have the ultimate responsibility for the profiteering and self-serving, selfish behaviour of some well-paid consultants who want to make even more money. We have created those conditions through our chronic under-funding and under-resourcing of the public health system and our support of the parasitical private health insurance industry. There is no doubt about that.

Obviously, and correctly, I am not entitled to a medical card. At a time when health care is being rationed, it would be shameful if I were. However, I believe every citizen should have access to the cradle-to-grave health care that a national health system would provide. As a matter of principle I would not take out private health insurance. It is absolutely wrong that one could jump a queue by dint of one's income. I would never take out such health insurance. Contrast that to the behaviour of the Taoiseach when he was Minister for Health. He introduced an additional levy on people who did not take out private health insurance by the age of 35 years before a deadline of May 2015. He had posters and T-shirts that touted, advertised and threatened on behalf of the private health insurance industry, urging people to get private health insurance or they would pay. He said at the time:

As Minister for Health, I wanted to take a lead. I also wanted to avoid the levy ... I can honestly say that I feel a lot better having taken out health insurance again.

What is the message there? It is that if one does not have private health insurance, one has something to worry about. He could afford to get it and he was relieved. What was he relieved about? He was relieved that he does not have to rely on the public health system.

Is it not absolutely shameful that the person who was in charge of the public health system said he was relieved he did not have to rely on that system because he got private health insurance? That is shocking. No Member of this House should have private health insurance. If we have it, we are saying that the system over which we preside cannot provide for citizens. People must take out private insurance if they can afford it. Huge numbers cannot. The fear tactics on that occasion worked. Some 150,000 additional people took out private health insurance after the scare tactics mounted by the then Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar, in 2015. It was dragooning people into taking out private health insurance to the benefit of the private health insurance industry. What happened at the time was shocking.

Consider the profits these health insurance companies make and the extraordinary waste in advertising. The money is not going to health care but to advertisements that urge people to go to the companies' hospitals so they will not have to queue. That is all waste. It is money diverted from the front line of public health care. I do not know why the Minister is shaking his head. That is a fact.

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