HEART BEAT:The day of awakening has arrived for our senior citizens as a result of the medical card debacle, writes Maurice Nelligan
O tempora, O, mores
(Cicero)
IT'S THE times. I don't think the senior citizens were bad-mannered and I doubt if Senator Geraldine Feeney really feels that either. Francis Bacon wrote in 1625 "age will not be defied" and the past few days have shown us how true that is.
It has been a week that has changed Ireland. It has seen the ordinary citizens, young and old and from every walk of life, awaken, take stock of their surroundings and wonder how it came to this.
Edmund Burke, from his plinth outside Trinity College, warned "here is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue". In those so-called "good times", self-interest ruled and the broad picture satisfied most. Now it is different.
We are looking at a stark bleak landscape, well foretold to those few who chose to listen. The prophets of gloom were right and those who advised them to commit suicide were miserably wrong.
The problem was that the latter controlled the State and had largely created the problems. Burke said: "Those who have been once intoxicated with power and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even for one year, can never willingly abandon it."
You can change your principles as often as your shirts, but your grip on power is sacrosanct. The Greens were quick learners; the other crowd learned it at their mother's knee. I suppose "shambles" is too kind a word to describe the medical card issue. It emanated from the health portfolio apparently. Why am I not surprised?
The issue changed more often than a chameleon in a multi-coloured jigsaw and each time the people who had given it a standing ovation on Budget Day, weakly proclaimed "it wasn't me folks; it was her. But we'll fix it and you'll be alright on the day," wink, wink.
This time the assurances did not work for an angry and disillusioned people. The spin doctors worked overtime and "universality" became the word. We were told that such principle was unaffordable and would bankrupt the country.
This scared everybody. What about free travel, free education, free whatever else, promised by this cynical outfit, usually at election time, to those who, having worked all their lives and built this State, reached the finishing line at 70 years?
No, the over-70s are safe, we were told. So it was all bulls***. Universality and its cost was just an attempt to wriggle back on a disastrous decision that had exposed the so-called Government to close scrutiny by many of those who had heretofore been content to let things pass. It was a political disaster, and consequently the people were roused from apathy and angrily were on the move. It would have been the decent and honourable thing to simply apologise, acknowledge that you had got it wrong and withdraw this callous, mean measure. The money could have been raised in many other ways.
Ill-advised, you raised the thresholds and in typical fashion tried to buy the people off. Now we have straight confrontation between stupidity and seething anger. My money will be wagered on the angry and upset.
An early attempt was made to lay the blame on the doctors and the so-called "gold card". This was despicable in the extreme. Far from being the problem, the Irish Medical Organisation had for years been seeking to meet the Government to discuss the whole funding and organisation of the GMS. They had been fobbed off with the story that the Competition Act prohibited such a meeting.
Now, as in 2001, an agreement has to be reached as a matter of urgency. There are, of course, many countries which look after their seniors in a comprehensive fashion and whose people would not tolerate any diminution of that responsibility. Britain, France, Germany, Holland, etc spring to mind.
Why should we be different and unable to meet our responsibilities? No answer is forthcoming because there is none, all these countries have the same problems as us regarding an ageing population. All these countries have health systems that deliver for the citizens and not for the profiteers. Increasingly, we are pushing toward the private model, a ridiculous direction for a country in recession and an unworthy destination in any case.
I need hardly tell you that the overall increase in health spending will not cover the rate of inflation, let alone medical inflation. I tell you my friends and senior citizens with whom I had the great privilege of marching on that day of awakening, that the solution is in our hands and we must not let it go.
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon