15,000 to have medical card eligibility extended

An expert group has concluded it is not possible to identify a list of medical conditions to be taken into account when determining a person’s eligibility for a medical card.

The decision means more than 15,000 people who had discretionary medical cards reinstated this year will have their eligibility extended.

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar said the cards would be extended for people "for as long as they need them" and there was no need to worry about the findings of the expert panel on extending eligibility for medical cards.

The decision is a further blow to former minister for health James Reilly, who announced a plan to extend eligibility for medical cards to people with specified illnesses shortly after the local elections in May. Dr Reilly was part of the Cabinet sub-committee on health which proposed appointing an expert panel to decide how this goal would be achieved.

At the time, the Government was under heavy pressure over a controversial “cull” of medical cards which resulted in many seriously ill patients losing their entitlement to a card.

However, the decision of the review panel is unlikely to discomfit Mr Varadkar, who indicated within a week of taking up office last July that he would walk away from it. He said this approach was not realistic and would result in nearly everyone qualifying for a card.

Tonight, Mr Varadkar’s spokesman said he would report to Cabinet when he has had an opportunity to consider the report of the expert panel in detail and would discuss its conclusions with the HSE.

Mr Varadkar is likely to stress to his Cabinet colleagues the need to press ahead with the Government’s plan to extend free GP care to all, starting with under-6s and over-70s, as recommended by the expert panel.

Negotiations with the Irish Medical Organisation are ongoing in relation to the first phases of this plan, but funding will have to be made available for further phases.

The report found it would be “neither feasible nor desirable” to list medical conditions that would qualify in order of priority, according to RTÉ News.

It said a list could not be drawn up because of the range of possible illnesses and the varying degrees of severity within each category of illness.

The report also found the existing discretionary card system is working imperfectly, and said the system for granting such cards is not efficient and is not uniformly operated throughout the country.

The reinstated discretionary cards are in most cases valid up to next May, but it is unlikely that a new approach will be implemented by then.