Madam, – Selling the VHI will cost millions and we may (just) get this back through its sale. What will this achieve other than the further advancement of an ideology which has been repeatedly rejected by the electorate, but which, through Minister for Health, Mary Harney, continues to exert its will against the weak and infirm? Who will benefit from the sale and who has “suggested” this to the Minister? We will hear a lot on how we can “enshrine” community rating, but little on the subtle market positioning which will ensure its erosion.
So, given that we own VHI, would the Government consider asking our opinion on this matter?
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – Mary Harney stated, with regard to the privatisation of the VHI, that it was to “support older and sicker people”. Can she not finish her sentences? Doesn’t she mean “older and sicker people” who can afford private health insurance? The rest can wait – trolley provided, of course.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – With all the furore over the sale of VHI it struck me, how does Mary Harney still manage to command a ministerial office as an independent? Surely she could do the decent thing and join Fianna Fáil at this stage? After all, she is well used to sinking ships.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – The VHI continues to serve its members well. It provides the sort of common fund which, if our sorry Republic were truly worthy of the name, would have been re-founded on a universal basis generations since.
Its overhead structure is mean, its administrative machinations are robust, and its finances are in apple-pie order precisely because it functions solely with the welfare of its members in mind. Why then, if it is not broke, should anyone be so perverse as to stick their fat fingers in it to fix it?
The answer is rooted in the same indolence which allowed our banks to fail and which, when confronted with the pending Quinn imbroglio fully two years ago, merely said “Go away. We have enough on our hands.”
Much as we were bustled into wasting billions on Anglo and Irish Nationwide, we are now to be deprived of our most efficient health insurer, the better to aid yet another stupid bail-out, this time of another of the VHI’s unsuccessful competitors. This is dreadful stuff, but worse is to come. These moves in relation to VHI can only mean one thing.
A profit margin is to be inserted into health insurance. This in turn can only mean, with the certainty that grain becomes flour in the press of the grindstones, that community rating will presently vanish. In due course, the burden of healthcare will bear ever more forcefully upon the public health service as those unable to pay rack-rated health insurance premiums give up the ghost and render themselves dependent on it.
One splutter of light. Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Minister for Health Mary Harney are not yet omnipotent. The emergence of even three competent and honest members from the Government’s ranks would be sufficient to avert this travesty. Since the matter is a finance measure, defeat of the Government would mean a general election.
The last 13 years have comprised nothing short of a cumulative disaster for all our citizens. It is time that this unhappy chapter is written to a close and that an opportunity is taken to wipe the slate and move forward as well as we may, ensuring that once more we can be proud to be citizens of this, our First Republic.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – Objectively, maybe “something should be done about” VHI. However, surely it should be done in the context of – and after – the establishment of a comprehensive national medical service and national health insurance system? Such as exist successfully in many other countries.
Would you trust the people who flogged off Eircom and Aer Lingus, (catastrophically); currently preside over our A&E “services” and let Daniel McAnaspie die in a ditch, to mess around with your health insurance?
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – If we can sell the VHI, why cant we sell the Passport Office?
– Yours, etc,