BOTH THE Minister for Health, Mary Harney, and the chief executive of the Health Service Executive, Prof Brendan Drumm, have said that they hold private health insurance policies.
However, when asked at the weekend if they had enough confidence in the State’s public healthcare system to allow their insurance cover to lapse, neither indicated whether they had or not.
However, Ms Harney told the Marian Finucane programme on RTÉ Radio 1 on Saturday she had no doubt that when the public health service reforms were “bedded down”, there would be fewer people taking out private health insurance as they would no longer feel they needed it to gain speedy access to services.
“The reason in Ireland that we have such a high level of private health insurance is that it’s community rated and, regardless of how old you are or how sick you are, we all pay the same for the same plan,” Ms Harney said.
“That’s under challenge because of the recent Supreme Court decision . . . but we will be coming forward with proposals to Government shortly to maintain that.”
Prof Drumm said he had acknowledged from day one that access to the public health service was not adequate and the biggest priority for the HSE was to improve access.
Meanwhile, Prof Drumm told the programme that a redundancy scheme would probably be put in place for about 1,000 HSE “backroom staff” in the next year.
Ms Harney also said the long-awaited legislation underpinning the “fair deal” nursing home funding scheme would be published in the next two weeks.
The scheme, which was due to come into effect last January and which would have allowed older people to pay for their care beyond the grave, had been delayed for legal reasons.
Ms Harney said the Bill had now been approved by the attorney general.
The Minister is due to meet the family of Clare woman Edel Kelly (26) who died earlier this year, a number of months after her cancer test results were not acted on by Ennis General Hospital.
The terms of reference for an inquiry into services at Ennis hospital are expected to be published this week, Ms Harney indicated.
Meanwhile, a review of 6,000 chest X-rays reported on by a locum consultant radiologist who worked at hospitals in Drogheda and Navan between August 2006 and August 2007 is nearing completion and sources are now indicating as many as nine patients may have had a delayed diagnosis.
Four of the patients had lung cancer and have died.