Madam, - Susie Long's untimely death and the questions of social inequality that it highlights are deeply saddening and shocking. She embodied the consequences of a national health programme that effectively divides patients into first- and second-class citizens.
It reminded me of my own experience 10 years ago when I found a lump in my breast. I was living in Germany at the time. Within days of seeing my GP, I was in hospital. The diagnosis was cancer and the lump was removed. I was then put on a regular programme of check-ups and post-operative care.
All of this cost me nothing above the monthly social security contributions from my salary. Germany's excellent public health service is funded through sizeable employee contributions.
After returning to live in Dublin two years ago, I was shocked when I inquired about a check-up and was told I would have to wait nine months if I went public, but could have an appointment within three days as a private patient.
It is all very well to blame the Government or the HSE, but in the recent election we chose a Government that promised to lower rather than increase taxation. In other words, Irish voters don't want to pay more for socially just public services, such as healthcare. We would rather endorse policies such as hospital co-location and further strengthen an increasingly two-tiered system that favours the wealthy.
I love living here again, yet I find it baffling and disappointing that we should deliberately choose the Boston model as opposed to Berlin. Surely with our past, we should care more about social equality and not just pay it lip service. - Yours, etc,
EMMA GORMAN,
Kilmainham,
Dublin 8.
****
Madam, - As a former cancer patient who owes his life to the UK National Health Service I heartily endorse Dr Desmond Dorr's positive comments on it (October 19th). In my case I was whisked in for tests within two weeks of the first symptom manifesting itself. Dr Dorr is right to remind us that the British NHS costs 25 per cent less per capita than its Irish counterpart and interestingly Northern Ireland is deemed to be the most competent NHS region. Not surprisingly, only 9 per cent of the UK population feel the need to have private health insurance, compared with 51 per cent here.
The heart-rending death of Susie Long for want of an utterly routine outpatient procedure is truly frightening and underlines the fact that the Irish healthcare system is a sick shambles. As an interim measure to avoid further needless deaths I urge the National Treatment Purchase Fund to widen its remit to "buy in" diagnostic testing when it is not available otherwise. Perhaps the Northern Ireland health service could help here. - Yours, etc,
DEREK LANGAN,
Dublin 16.
****
Madam, - The Taoiseach says "the system" failed Susie Long (Dáil Report, October 17th) when in fact it was the American ideology of Minister for Health Mary Harney that failed her. He should be ashamed.
As a pharmacist, I am paid three times more by the State for the same professional services to private patients as to public medical card patients.
From December the HSE intends to let full medical card holders pay for their medicines, or else the Government will cobble together a dispensary service for them akin to that of the 1960s. The divide just gets wider and wider. Health reform, Harney style, means creating an administrative juggernaut to run roughshod over all of this State's professional service providers.
At some stage this Minister and her Government colleagues will be replaced and somebody will reform the system from the patient up and not from the top down, as she has tried with her immoral 10,000 per cent increase in top administrative grades. - Yours, etc,
JOSEPH HAIRE,
Ballygub, Inistiogue,
Co Kilkenny.