The Socialist (Mar 07) - Build a public National health service! / Student nurses organise for their rights

Bobby Carroll, a five week old baby spent four days screaming in pain at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda waiting for a bed to become available for him at the Children’s hospital in Crumlin, Dublin.

Bobby was vomiting and urinating from his anal passage. His father said, "In Drogheda he was red from head to toe from screaming, he was in an awful lot of pain…he was in hospital four days and they could not treat him. It’s unreal in this day and age that a five week old baby could be left four days in a regional hospital waiting for a bed in another hospital…it’s horrendous." The Irish Times 13 March 2007.

But Bobby Carroll could not be transferred to Crumlin because there was no bed available in order to admit him for surgery. In the end his parents discharged Bobby from hospital and drove him to Crumlin. Dr. David Vaughan consultant paediatrician in Drogheda said, "In an ideal world all children would be transferred immediately. Unfortunately as everyone knows sometimes that is not achievable. There are only a certain number of beds."

Bobby Carroll couldn’t get a bed in Crumlin hospital because the government has refused to fulfil its 2001 promise to provide 4,800 more acute hospital beds. There is a shortage of approximately 6,000 beds in the health system.

Similar stories of the sick needlessly suffering and in the most tragic cases dying because the health service is under-resourced and starved of vital facilities, equipment and staff are unfortunately commonplace. In the recent period a debate has begun on what is the best way to solve the crisis in the health service.

Minister for Health, Mary Harney and Bertie Ahern would have you believe that private healthcare is the best way to solve the crisis. To this end the government have provided incentives and tax breaks for private health operators to establish and run private, for profit hospitals and nursing homes. They are also implementing a scheme to allow up to ten private hospitals, with major tax concessions, to be built on the grounds of public hospitals.

The reality is that private healthcare is about making profits. Private health costs more and only deals with a limited number of medical procedures, as private companies "cherry pick" the most lucrative in order to increase the profits they make. Although many people are forced to have private health insurance to get even the most basic treatments done in a reasonable amount of time, it is only those who are wealthy and can afford the most expensive insurance policies that can get treated instantly.

Running healthcare for profit is at the core of the crisis in the health system in Ireland. The Socialist Party is opposed to private healthcare. Instead what we need is a free, publicly-funded national health service that provides both primary and hospital care to everyone irrespective of their income.

Bobby Carroll’s father James correctly believes that the health service should be the "the most important thing on the government’s agenda". We all know that it isn’t – the most important thing on the government’s health agenda is how much profit can be made by private health companies – the suffering of the sick comes a poor second place.

A public national health service could provide the thousands of extra acute hospital beds that are needed to end the appalling queues in A&E departments. It could eradicate the hospital waiting lists that see tens of thousands waiting months and in some cases years for vital treatment. The establishment of modern primary healthcare centres with GPs, nurses, physiotherapists, social workers and others working in teams would bring quality healthcare into the heart of our communities.