FG: Universal Health Care:

Health & FairCare

Key Facts

• €16 billion is spent annually on a health system that does not work.
• The Cervical Cancer vaccine for young girls was abandoned by the Govt. It would have cost less than €10 million from a €16 billion budget.
• An average of 300 patients were left on A&E trolleys everyday this year.
• There 150,000 outpatients waiting on treatment, some have been waiting for 8 months
• The hospital bed system is choked with inefficiencies resulting in 216,000 beds being lost last year.

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FairCare

For the past decade, the Government’s answer to every problem in the health service has been to throw taxpayers’ money at it. Despite the billions of euro spent, we still have an inefficient, ineffective and wasteful health service that does not respond to patient needs.

Every week, hundreds of patients languish on trolleys in overcrowded A&E departments, thousands of patients wait on inpatient waiting lists that go on for months and hundreds of thousands of patients wait on outpatient waiting lists that go on for years.

Rather than fixing the health service, controlling wasteful spending and tackling needless bureaucracy, the Government is more interested in saving money through the withdrawal of patient services, such as the lifesaving cervical cancer vaccination. This is not good enough.

Fine Gael believes that we deserve better and that we can do better. We are committed to delivering a health service we can be proud of, one that responds to patients’ needs and provides people with the care and treatment they deserve.

In 2008, Fine Gael established a Health Commission, chaired by former leader Alan Dukes, to develop a radical and patient focused solution that would give us a health service that would deliver.

In FairCare, we outline how we will deliver care for you and your loved ones. This approach is built around the patient, rewarding performance from doctors and hospitals and ensuring there will no longer be a two-tier health system.

This model is based on the Dutch system of healthcare which is ranked No. 1 in Europe for health.

Under FairCare, we will slash waiting lists for a fraction of the money spent on the NTPF every year, as has been achieved in Northern Ireland. Hospitals will operate efficiently and effectively, and most importantly, people will have timely access to the high quality care and treatment they deserve.

We will introduce a “money-follows-the-patient” budgeting system so that hospitals are paid for how many patients they treat. Patients will no longer be seen as “costs” to the health service, but as sources of “income” and hospitals will be rewarded for efficient practices.

Finally, we will deliver Universal Health Insurance where everyone has private health insurance, either subsidised or fully financed by the State. Universal Health Insurance will remove the two-tier health system so that everybody will have equal access to healthcare according to need. Furthermore, with Universal Health Insurance, everybody will be entitled to free GP care, prescriptions, hospital care as well as a range of other treatments and services that will keep people healthier for longer.

Fine Gael’s plan is to transform the Irish health service into one of the best in Europe learning from best international practice, and to create a health system that we can all be proud of.

Visit www.faircare.ie for more information