Eamon Scanlon (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is imperative to ensure that those persons who experience financial hardships due to very serious illness will receive a discretionary medical card. Page 56 of A Programme for a Partnership Government says: "We will maintain a humane approach for discretionary medical card provision." I received a reply to a parliamentary question on 25 April 2018 where I was told it was "neither feasible nor desirable to list medical conditions in priority order for medical card eligibility." This effectively denies cancer patients an automatic entitlement to a medical card. As far as I can find there is nothing about the medical card application process that is compassionate or humane.

I am baffled that there appears to be no political will on the part of the Minister or the Government to extend the medical card to cancer or terminally ill patients.

Patients and their families face a financial crisis while they are going through their treatment. The 2015 report, The Real Cost of Cancer, showed how a significant number of patients face a severe drop in income while at the same time running up extra bills on a range of items such as child care, travel, prescription charges, hospital stays and consultant visits.

We cannot lump on any additional financial stress to medical care by making patients jump through bureaucratic hoops, but this is what is happening currently.

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