EVERY CITIZEN would have health insurance with free GP care under a Fine Gael government, party health spokesman Dr James Reilly told delegates.
He said the party’s FairCare health service would treat everybody equally.
“There will be an NBT – national body test – an age-appropriate annual check-up to pick up illnesses early,” said Dr Reilly.
“There will be chronic illness programmes for diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma.
“Go on – tell me we cannot afford major reforms at a time of recession. That’s what Fianna Fáil wants you to tell me. They want to freeze-frame real life while the economic disaster they caused gets fixed.”
Dr Reilly said his party would implement a Dutch model to reform the health service.
“I have seen it for myself. In the Netherlands I stood in the AE department with no trolleys.”
He said the average time from entering the department to leaving it was 2½ hours.
“The average waiting time for an outpatient appointment is two to three weeks. But on the recommendation of your GP, you can be seen in 24 hours by any specialist, like a cardiologist. They open GP letters in Holland, you see . . . ”
There were no waiting lists, and they did not have cancelled operations or delay discharges, said Dr Reilly. Dutch AEs did not have the hygienic gel dispensers one would see in Irish hospitals as they were not required because they did not have hospital bugs in their wards.
“I do not believe for one minute that we cannot achieve what they achieved in the Netherlands.”
Dr Reilly said under Fine Gael, the patient would be at the centre of everything.
“That’s not what we have at the moment. What we have is a health system that serves the health system, and to hell with the patient.”
Under Fine Gael, he said, there would be primary care centres where groups of GPs would operate with nurses in modern buildings with X-ray, ultrasound and endoscopy so patients could be diagnosed and treated in their communities.
The centres would have rooms for visiting consultants, who would play an integral role in developing a robust community mental health service.
He said Fine Gael would draw on the model used in the North where a waiting list of 57,000 people was done away with in just 18 months. Each hospital would be paid for each patient seen, for each procedure performed and for each surgery carried out.
Senator Frances Fitzgerald said it was getting worse for those availing of the Irish health service.
“You had X-rays carried out, but you don’t know if yours was properly examined. Your GP referred you to a hospital, but heard nothing back from that very same hospital.”