FREE GP care for all will be introduced by Fine Gael within five years if it gets into government, the party promised yesterday.
It also promised to slash waiting times for outpatients, inpatients and patients in hospital emergency departments by setting non-negotiable targets for hospitals.
Dr James Reilly, the party’s health spokesman, said managers could be sacked if they didn’t reach targets, which would be monitored by a special delivery unit within the Department of Health. Fine Gael also says it would abolish the current two-tier health system by introducing a system of universal health insurance like in the Netherlands.
It envisages the State funding the insurance premiums of medical card holders and children under 18 years, while low-income groups would receive an allowance which they would pay to their chosen insurer.
There is no mention of extra hospital beds in the party’s new policy for reform of the health service entitled FairCare, which was published yesterday.
Dr Reilly said the 500 beds closed last year would have to be reopened. The party would look at the better use of existing beds and he promised other policy documents on long-term care and rehabilitation and on local hospitals. But yesterday’s policy assures smaller hospitals they will continue to have a role in acute medical care but not acute surgery.
It also states: “Under universal health insurance, public hospitals will continue to be owned by the State but will be governed and managed by local hospital trusts.”
In addition Fine Gael would scrap the Government’s hospital co-location project, abolish the National Treatment Purchase Fund, reduce the number of administrative staff in the HSE by at least 5,000 and ensure money follows patients in a way that would ensure hospitals would see patients as generating income rather than a cost to be avoided.
Fine Gael also promised a comprehensive network of primary care centres by the end of its first term. It believes the capital costs of this programme “can largely be borne by the private sector”.
Its reforms of the health system, it says, could be done within current budgets.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said: “The Netherlands spends only slightly more than us on health on a per capita basis, but has minimal waiting lists and is ranked number one in Europe for health.”
He insisted Fine Gael’s policy was realistic and deliverable.
But neither Mr Kenny nor Dr Reilly were willing to say how much the standard insurance package would cost those who already have health insurance, saying it would be folly to commit to a figure more than four years in advance. They will not be worse off than they are now, he said.
In relation to the 16 per cent of the population who do not qualify for a medical card but do not have health insurance, Dr Reilly said that in all likelihood the premiums for most of this cohort would be partly or fully subsidised.
Dr Reilly later said that he could not see how it would cost more than €200 per adult each year for this group of lower-income families. He said that for two parents and four children the overall cost would be €400.
However, Barry Andrews, Minister of State at the Department of Health yesterday queried the cost of the package and also claimed that what Fine Gael was describing as insurance was really an additional tax.