Ireland’s Health Care Woes

I think it’s important that people understand what comes with free, government run health care. Check out what is happening in Ireland:

In the latest scandal to hit the health services, it has emerged that after 3,000 mammograms were taken at the midlands Portlaoise Hospital, seven women were erroneously given the all-clear.

‘Initially, we heard how human error caused the problem. This gave people a sense of relief. Then as the situation further evolved, we learned how there were problems with dirt, with 16-year-old machines,’ says Janette Byrne who founded the patients advocacy organization in response to how she and her mother were treated at Dublin hospitals.

‘There were problems that prevented people from doing their jobs properly and which the department was told about,’ she says.

That is the key. The department was told about the problems, as far back as 2005, but nothing was done, and now women have more advanced cases of breast cancer. While this is bad, it isn’t the only problem the Emerald Isle faces:

‘In a restructuring of the health service three years ago, 3,000 beds were lost to the system and not enough have been replaced. There hasn’t been an improvement in the problem of patients waiting on trolleys, which is really high at the moment,’ she says.

‘Sometimes, in Dublin even plastic chairs in Accident and Emergency departments are full and ambulances can’t get people in hospital, so they have to wait too. God forbid there is ever a train crash or an emergency situation,’ she says.

John Kidd, an ambulance driver, employed by Dublin Fire Brigade which operate 12 of 15 ambulances in the Dublin area for the HSE, also pinpoints the lack of beds in the system.

‘If we arrive at a hospital where there are no beds, we can wait up to two hours to move a patient into the hospital while calls are coming in,’ Kidd says. He feels that there has been an enormous disimprovement in the service since he joined in the 1980s.

‘There is big frustration within the service, members of the service are disgruntled with the service they are providing. In a review of the service carried out by the Chief Ambulance Officer in London, recommended that the number of ambulances be increased from 12 to 20, but nothing has been done,’ says Kidd.

According to Kidd, Ireland has one of the lowest rates of ambulance cover in the world and this along with the shortage of beds is creating an impossible situation.

‘We sometimes have no ambulance to send out. Patients are definitely suffering,’ he says.

Is this what is waiting for us? To deny that this fate awaits American patients is naive. Remember the rule: capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth, socialism is the equal distribution of poverty. It transitions well to health care: capitalist health care is the unequal distribution of health care, socialized health care is the equal distribution of poor health care.