Madam, - Mary Harney, Minister for Health and Children, says that any new private hospital will have to make services available for public patients "paid for by the State" (Opinion & Analysis, August 24th).
"The State should be able to buy those services at competitive prices," she writes. "This is the way the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) works."
Is it? How are we to know whether the prices will be competitive or not?
The NTPF states in its recent brochure that the top 10 procedures are as follows: cataracts, procedure scopes, tonsillectomy, varicose veins, joint replacements, cardiac surgery or cardiology, skin lesions, grommets, cholecystectomy/gall bladder - all procedures that should have been carried out in our public hospitals by consultants working in the public sector.
In its quite extensive brochure I noticed that the NTPF was reticent about the fees paid to consultants for the above public work.
I telephoned the NTPF and asked how much consultants were paid for each procedure. I was told I would not be given that information - for example, how much a surgeon is paid for removing a gall-bladder under Mary Harney's scheme.
I asked why the information was not forthcoming. I was told it was commercially sensitive. And, without my asking, I was further advised that the information would not be available even under the Freedom of Information Act.
It is remarkable that public money disbursed for the treatment of public patients is so shyly secret that it dare not see the light of day. Will the same diffidence obtain in the new proposed private hospitals?
Mary Harney tells us the prices will be "competitive". But since public money has become so exquisitely sensitive, as it slides from the State to the consultant, how will we ever know? - Yours, etc,
Dr CYRIL DALY,
Howth Road,
Killester,
Dublin 5.