Madam, – I note that the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, has rejected the Adelaide Hospital Society’s proposals on universal health insurance (Home News, April 15th). She has said that there cannot be unlimited procedures for an unlimited number of patients. I would remind the Minister that public patients are already facing long outpatient, A E and elective surgical lists. These waits, of course, are not replicated in the private healthcare industry in this country.
Ms Harney was once quoted as saying Ireland was closer to Boston than Berlin. Perhaps she is unaware of the recent success of President Obama in relation to healthcare in the US. Ireland, it seems, will also remain far from having the German universal healthcare system which was initiated under Otto Von Bismarck and his health insurance legislation of 1883. The Minister will have to seek alternative locations for comparative purposes. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – The Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney, has rejected the Adelaide Hospital Society universal health care model (Home News, April 15th), as she has similar proposals in the past, on the basis that competition in funding for health care is essential to an affordable and efficient system. The same logic can be applied to the provision of every other public service and is akin to reviving tax farming.
This was a system by which governments since Roman times contracted out the raising of revenue to private tax collectors. It had the advantage of transferring the responsibility of funding services, and the blame, to the companies that secured these lucrative contracts. The only disadvantages were that it was up to the tax farmers how they decided to carve up the cake in ways that ensured themselves a hefty profit, generating corruption, golden circles and leaving the heaviest burden on those least able to bear it.
Does that sound familiar to users of our current “competitive” health system? I use the word cake deliberately, because something called the French Revolution swept away the practice in most of mainland Europe over 200 years ago. By all means have competition in the provision of services, but competition in how to soak the patient-cum-taxpayer makes no sense to anyone, except possibly today’s tax farmers in the health insurance industry. – Yours, etc,