The Labour party have proposed compulsory health insurance and free GP treatment for all in a health care system it describes as modelled more on "Berlin than Boston".
At the release of their reform plan for the health service, party leader Mr Ruarai Quinn called for change in the Government’s approach to the health system saying: "If more people move towards private insurance, as has been the case in recent years, the inequality at the heart of our system will only increase. We have to change."
Fianna Fáil this evening dismissed the proposals as incapable of achiving its aims.
Mr Batt O'Keefe said the new plan is "fundamentally flawed, uncosted and can achieve none of the objectives they claim," he said.
Labour's proposed reforms will form the basis of their health policy for the next election.
Labour’s new strategy includes a universal health care guarantee for all citizens, free GP care for all (funded partly by taxation and partly by insurance), a health management structure with more autonomy for hospitals, a National Health Forum, a Health Ombudsman and other institutional changes.
The document entitled Our Good Healthplans for the new positions of Minister of State for Public Health, to improve and co-ordinate the work of health protection and promotion across all government departments. The idea of the post is to provide health promotion and protection beyond the health service itself.
The main points of the document include:
- Making 4,800 new hospital beds available
- Building at least one large new hospital in Dublin
- Recruiting 5,000 new nurses by 2006
- Recruiting 1,500 GPs by 2006
- Improving training and promotion opportunities
- Free medicines for 40% of the population
The proposed income threshold for insurance cover will include 50 per cent of the population. A further 10 per cent will be partly assisted on a sliding scale. The upper 40 per cent will continue to pay will benefit from tax relief.
"Over the last few months there has been mounting evidence of our two-tiered [health] system, a system where people die waiting for treatment because they cannot afford the cost of the insurance that will guarantee them treatment. It is not a health service fit for a republic, it is not a health service fit for the 21st century," Mr Quinn concluded.
