No
to private healthcare Use the wealth for public health The Socialist |
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It is an astounding condemnation of the political establishment in this country that after 15 years of unprecedented economic growth the health service is worse than it was during the 1980s. Alongside the crisis in the A&E departments and the numbers of patients suffering on trolleys, over 400 on some days, there are huge problems throughout the health service. Brendan Gleeson savaged the government on the Late Late Show and highlighted the degrading and obscene conditions that thousands of sick people have to endure in our A&E departments. His remarks were the catalyst that unleashed a wave of anger against the government forcing Mary Harney to declare a “national crisis” nine years after coming to power. The new reviews and taskforces that are being initiated by the Health Service Executive (HSE) that start from the premise that there are enough resources will not solve the problems. They represent the latest attempt at arse covering by this government who have refused to deal with the core issues for years. “You cannot deliver safe care to huge volumes of people when you don’t have the time, the space and the resources. You are constantly prioritising what is the next most important thing you have to do. You are dealing with high volumes of people and the danger here is the most urgent case might get missed because of the stress and strain that both the nurses and the department are under and that could be catastrophic for the patient. As a nurse in A&E it’s a real sickener listening to the HSE and the Tanaiste saying that things are getting better, that there are real improvements, and yet you have just left a completely overcrowded department with people waiting for their third or fourth day for a bed” - Joe Hoolan, A&E nurse Midlands. Four thousand extra acute hospital beds and real investment in local primary health care could help resolve the A&E crisis. On top of this there are massive waiting lists for treatment and what are Mary Harney and this government focused on trying to introduce - a US style private health service! Of course if you have the money, you can get the best of care quickly with the minimum of fuss in the private health system, which operates like a leech on the public health system. The counter-reforms that the government wants to implement, that is further privatisation - running health care on the basis of market mechanisms for profit, with increased charges for health care, will make the situation much worse. This government and their policies have completely failed. The Socialist Party demands that the wealth that exists is used to establish a state of the art, comprehensive public health service that is available to all regardless of income. Such a health service should not be run by un-elected, un-representative quangos but should be run democratically by representatives of all healthcare workers and the broader community and on that basis could provide the type of health service we require. |
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There has been a lot of hype about the proposal by a private consortium to build the new national children’s hospital on a non-profit basis. The media and politicians
have heaped praise on the consortium’s so-called philanthropy
and they claim it will save the state €250 million. In reality
this offer harks back to the Victorian era when the poor depended on
the crumbs from the tables of the rich. |
