IMO warns on legacy of health cuts

The Irish Medical Organisation has warned that “indiscriminate” health cuts will limit services resulting in a sicker population now and in the future.

IMO chief executive George McNeice said even in times of plenty, the health service struggled to provide adequately for those who needed its facilities.

Addressing the IMO’s annual conference in Killarney, Mr McNeice said the campaign of cutbacks currently being implemented by the Health Service Executive had no structure or rationale behind it

He said the cutbacks would “limit services, increase waiting lists, create inequities and increase unemployment with unintended consequences for the social welfare system”.

“The rationing of services will, let’s be honest, affect the poorest and most vulnerable in our society who will simply not have the means to pay for essential health services.

When this crisis passes, we will still need a fully functioning public health service which meets the needs of a healthy population and not a population that has suffered the ill effects of rationing,” Mr McNiece said.

Yesterday delegates at the conference voted overwhelmingly in favour of a motion of no confidence in the Government’s health policy.

Mr McNeice claimed the HSE was creating a “system where health is treated as a commodity that is driven by market forces and where only money talks.”

“There has never been an honest debate in this country about the privatisation by stealth of the secondary care system and the consequent downgrading of services,” he said.

Mr McNeice urged the Government to end its plan to develop private co-located hospitals on the grounds of public institutions.

He said the co-location project was ill-conceived from the beginning and was never going to deliver on the principle of giving care based on medical need as opposed to the ability to pay.

He told delegates that while there has always been a place for private medicine in Ireland, the current policy had not served patients well.

“Taxes have been foregone to provide tax breaks to developers who, understandably, are in the business for purely commercial reasons,” he said.