The Health Bill 2008, which gives effect to Government plans to abolish the automatic entitlement of over-70s to medical cards, was published today.
The Bill is expected to come before the Dáil next week and the Seanad the following week.
The Government had planned to withdraw the cards from 20,000 older people above certain income thresholds from January 1st.
This will affect an estimated 140,000 over-70s medical card holders and means tests are to take place in January and February.
Some 210,000 over-70s who currently have medical cards were means-tested at some stage.
After much controversy over the plan to abolish the automatic entitlement to the cards, the Government outlined higher income thresholds in late October.
Age Action claimed today that older people on low and middle income levels could lose their medical cards under the new bill.
"While the government's intention was to take the over-70s medical card from the wealthy, the reality is many pensioners on decent pensions will be hit if they are single, or on the day they lose their spouse," said Age Action spokesman Eamon Timmins.
The organisation is demanding to know what extra cost is being allowed for by the Government for the additional acute hospital beds and nursing home beds which will be needed by a proportion of those who lose their medical cards.
"From a public health point of view the Government is making a huge mistake," warned Mr Timmins.
Fine Gael health spokesman James Reilly said Mary Harney and Mary Coughlan's utterances in the Dáil have transpired to be worthless as their guarantee to index link the new medical card thresholds is not
guaranteed in the bill.
"This Government has consistently misled the electorate and its words of
deception, that the vulnerable would be protected in Budget '09, continue
to ring loudly in the ears of the elderly," he said.
The Labour Party said today it would “vigorously oppose” the Bill.
Health spokeswoman Jan O'Sullivan said Labour "will fight to retain the principle of universal medical card cover for those who contributed so much to the development of this country".
She said that while there was is an obligation on the Minister for Health to review the income levels each year in the light of the consumer price index, "there is no legal obligation on her to actually increase the limits to reflect any increase in inflation".
Reiterating Sinn Féin's opposition to the legislation published today, the party's Health Spokesperson Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said the bill was a regressive step that will penalise pensioners.
"Fianna Fáil backbenchers made much of the so-called u-turn by the Government on this issue. In reality there has been no u-turn; automatic entitlement to the medical card for over 70s will go if this legislation is passed," said Mr Ó Caoláin.
"Instead of this regressive legislation we should be seeing measures to end the public-private apartheid in our health services, starting with an end to tax breaks and other subsidies for the private for-profit health industry," he added.