Government plans to give a medical card to everyone over 70 regardless of income, while a quarter of a million people on low incomes must pay for GP care, were condemned at the IMO conference yesterday.
A further attack on the proposal, announced in the Budget, is expected this morning when doctors debate several motions on the issue.
Yesterday's criticism came from Mr George McNeice, chief executive of the IMO, in an address to the conference.
Mr McNeice also warned hospitals and health boards that the IMO would "meet them head on" if they frustrated the implementation of the agreement which settled the industrial dispute by Non-Consultant Hospital Doctors.
The Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, urged the IMO to take the matter to the Labour Relations Commission. The Health Service Employers' Agency echoed the Minister's call and said every NCHD is benefiting this year from an average increase of about £20,000 in overtime payments alone.
On the medical cards issue, Mr McNeice said the IMO had no objection in principle to a State-provided comprehensive care plan embracing the entire population. But he said: "Unless and until such a plan is negotiated and in place it is our absolute conviction that health resources should be allocated on a needs basis."
General practitioners had been incensed by the plan to grant medical cards to the over70s regardless of income. The IMO did not object to the concept of free medical care for this group "but rather to the decision to prefer them to other and, by definition, more needy groups such as the 250,000 people just above the medicalcard threshold".
Under Government plans the over-70s will qualify for medical cards without a means test from July 1st.
Mr McNeice also complained that little or no practical assistance had been given to GPs to help them treat refugees who had different cultural backgrounds.
The issue of overtime payment to NCHDs is expected to be addressed by Mr Martin when he speaks at the conference today. He is expected to argue that NCHDs have, in fact, been receiving overtime payments under the deal agreed last year and to point to hospitals such as St James's in Dublin where, Department officials say, NCHDs were paid about £6,800 extra on average in the first quarter of the year.
The IMO president, Dr Mick Molloy, said yesterday his organisation did not know or seek to know what individual doctors were earning in overtime. The issue concerned the definition of overtime.
The IMO believed that hours worked outside 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Thursday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday constituted overtime. He said some hospitals were rostering doctors to work outside these hours as part of their basic 39-hour week to avoid paying them overtime for these periods.
The Health Service Employers' Agency said the basic week was 39 hours and if doctors were unhappy with working at night and at weekends as part of that, they should negotiate a shift allowance like other health service workers instead of seeking overtime for it.
Both the Minister and the HSEA again urged the IMO to seek clarification on the issue at the Labour Relations Commission. Dr Molloy said there was no point in doing so as the matter had already been clarified.