What inequality between public and private means in practice April 26, 2016
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Waiting times for potentially lifesaving tests for cancer are up to 25 times longer for public patients than for those paying privately, a new report reveals.
The report highlights “striking differences” in access for public compared with private patients, with GPs reporting some public patients have to wait up to 480 days for an ultrasound.
And:
A patient’s ability to pay privately “always” or “usually” affects access to referral services, according to almost 90 per cent of doctors surveyed. “Delays in accessing diagnostics force many patients to pay for scans and tests privately to secure diagnosis. As a result, a patient’s ability to pay is linked to their ability to access diagnostics used to detect cancer in a timely manner.”
Literally sickening.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Not to diminish the importance of the water issue, but wouldn’t it be something if the talks on government formation were focussed on this instead?
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You’re assuming that if talks focussed on that, they would be focussing on reducing the inequality.
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Yep SoS. Absolutely. But then I guess the two parties FF and FG are at one on this issue – they set it up this way and are happy for it to stay as it is.
I work in the health sector and I happily bought into the line that the reorganisation and refocussing of cancer services that took place over the last decade meant that public and private patients got pretty much the same chance from the system. This blows that one out of the water.
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This is the kind of information that should be flung at Michael McDowell every time he pokes his head up and spouts off on this or that aspect of Irish political life. He epitomises to me that element of the Irish political class who are viscerally opposed to equality and, in McDowell’s case, any notion of enforceable rights to health care, education or housing.
We’re seeing the results of that viewpoint, which is held by most in FG and FF if not articulated publicly, in the housing disaster and, now, substantive confirmation of what we’ve all known for years.
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