Madam, – On reading reports of the new “fair deal” nursing home scheme (Home News, October 30th), one had to wonder what inspired the Minister to give it that title. It is clear given the comments from the Irish Senior Citizens’ Parliament that the scheme is very far from “fair”. Clearly the scheme as proposed will result in very different levels of care for the elderly. Those with money will receive the full range of care, while those who don’t will receive a good deal less.
The title “fair deal” will be forever associated with the efforts of President Truman, followed by Kennedy and Johnson, to introduce a modicum of social care into the American way of life. A call for universal health care was central and led eventually to the introduction of Medicare and other reforms designed to bring fairness and justice to a society that had simply stepped over those that had difficulty keeping up. And now as President Obama sets out to tackle the two-tier health system that is causing such pain and misery, the “fair deal” seems about to reach the final destination charted for it by Truman.
But our “fair deal” will mean the opposite; it seems we are destined to pass the US on the way down as they at last seek to rise above the vulgarity of the “everyman for himself” ideology that seems to inform all aspects of our own Government’s policy-making. Is our “fair deal” scheme so named to hide its true intentions, to extend the two-tier health system to the grave? In all of this it seems we can be sure of one thing: in the current Minister for Health, we have one of the finest spin doctors about. – Yours, etc,