Madam, - Minister for Health Mary Harney is continuing her public-private partnership (PPP) policies with the announcement of the provision of 1,000 beds through the private sector. These beds will not equate to the private beds to be replaced in public hospitals, unless the private hospitals provide 24-hour emergency care, which is not intended.
The Minister's claim that this policy will provide 1,000 public beds is duplicitous and an action similar to the health strategy launched in 2001, and now reneged upon.
More disturbing about the PPP policy is that international experience does not support it. The two countries with the greatest experience of PPPs in healthcare are the UK and Australia. In the UK, Prof Allyson Pollock of St George's Hospital in London has shown that the hospitals built by the private sector for the National Health Service will cost the taxpayer more than if the government had borrowed the capital itself.
In addition, the PPPs have failed to deliver the number of beds originally proposed. The resulting limitations in that scheme have resulted in a significant alteration in PPP policy in the UK.
More worrying is the experience in Australia, where these initiatives have largely failed to reduce costs, while increasing inequality in healthcare provision. This has resulted in a rethink of PPP policy, with an emphasis on ensuring that any further such developments will ensure universality and equity.
In addition, Prof Stephen Duckett of the University of Melbourne has just published research showing lengthening waiting lists in public hospitals where there is an increased parallel private hospital sector - a development that Ms Harney is now proposing.
The Minister's initiative, alongside her recent refusal to introduce risk equalisation, will result in increasing health insurance premiums, instability in the health insurance market, more costly healthcare, and worsening health inequality. - Yours, etc,
JOHN BARTON, Chairman, Health Services Action Group, Beechlawn, Ballinasloe, Co Galway.