HEART BEAT:So-called 'reforms' are serving to privatise the health service by stealth, writes Maurice Neligan.
I FIND IT quite difficult to work up any enthusiasm about this major event - above all, why we alone are being called upon to be the saviours of Europe.
I have listened to impassioned advocates of both sides of the argument and have to suppress the urge to call a plague on both their houses. Like, I suspect, many other people, I will vote Yes as I basically feel that all the major parties in the State are in favour. I hope I would trust them to look after us.
Don't even start to tell me how ridiculous that position is; I know full well. For all the good and committed politicians trying to reach the minds of numbskulls like myself, I would remind them of the words of Confucius: "The people may be made to follow a course of action but they may not be made to understand it."
On days like these as I would rather be outdoors where nature is catching up on a late spring. Our squirrels have re-emerged, our urban foxes are a nightly presence and the garden is replete with nesting birds whom, to my fury, the Magpies have done some damage. Under the window in the ivy
Sweet Robin sits in the bush
Singin' so rarely (Walter Scott)
Mr and Mrs Robin are running a sort of conveyor belt to keep the young fed. I know the feeling, but I think the young robins flee the nest much sooner than human kind - and isn't it all worth it in the end? The tadpoles and frogs are waiting for the heron to do his rounds and the Highest Authority has just explained all the plants, flowers and bushes to me yet again. I am a slow learner.
Last week I was upset at the use of the word "reform" in connection with the gross mismanagement of the health service. Thomas Carlyle wrote that "all reforms except a moral one will prove unavailing" and this is particularly apt here. Does this so-called reform mean running down the public service built so slowly and painstakingly since the foundation of the State and replacing it with a for-profit model, where cash is king?
If that is so, spare us all the tendentious clap trap and come right out with it. Chief Elf, before you get carried too far down that slippery slope I would draw your attention to an article in the Wall Street Journal on April 5th last, on "not-for-profit hospitals". It makes it clear that these are not "exactly as it says on the tin". The converse is true in many cases - the camouflage being of use only to secure the tax breaks. The gaping holes in what purports to be our service and the tax breaks available ensure the passage of similar entrepreneurs into our shark receptive waters.
Should anybody doubt that privatisation is taking place by stealth, let me offer a graphic example of the spin being employed to achieve this aim.
Over the past few weeks we are being told that various hospitals in different locations had exceeded the 20 per cent private admission quota. The implication was that this disadvantaged the public 80 per cent. Very simple, but let's think about it.
Firstly, every citizen in this State is entitled to a bed in a public hospital. So what is the reason for publishing such data? Is it to make people forget this fact? Secondly, more than 50 per cent of the community carry private health insurance. Therefore, the appropriate ratio in any institution should be 50-50, and only when the private ratio exceeds this should there be need for disquiet.
It's worse than that. Tax incentives are still available to build further private hospitals, some being located on publicly owned land, despite clear warnings from the health insurance sector that the money to make these institutions viable cannot be forthcoming from their funds without sharp increases in premium.
The law of diminishing returns applies here. The steeper the rise in premiums and the more uncertain the economic horizon, the more citizens drop private insurance. The private sector contracts, the underfunded public sector cannot cope now, let alone with further influx. Hence a vicious cycle ensues, benefiting nobody.
These are not the only absurd reforms. There seems to be the wholesale abdication of common sense in dealing with problems besetting the service, particularly in recent years.
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon