Sir, – On the fevered discussion of private and public maternity care, Dr Domhnall McGlacken-Byrne makes several points (Letters, June 4th). Some of these, stated as facts, are, I would suggest, opinions. I would like to address some of them.
To his claim to have worked in three of our maternity hospitals as a doctor, I would state that I have done similarly. As an anaesthesiologist I’ve been involved in obstetric cases in six Irish centres over almost 30 years.
That “Ireland’s two tiered model of healthcare casts us as an outlier among developed nations” requires some evidence. I’ve personally been in private hospitals from Australia to Sudan, and know they exist in the UK, USA, Canada and elsewhere.
Many people around the world pay for health insurance so to have access to their choice of doctor, and for other reasons that broadly represent valuing their time.
RM Block
The statement that private obstetric care is not a choice if it “costs about five grand” seems reasonable. But Ireland is a remarkably equal country. I’ve encountered many schoolteachers and civil servants who found that money and saw fit to allocate it on health.
Smoking a pack a day in Ireland costs well over the “five grand” mentioned. Somehow the nation’s smokers do not all seem to be super-rich. Like daily smoking, private healthcare is a choice comparable in cost to a short family holiday.
Stating that the consultants advocating such choice have a “brazen conflict of interest” presupposes that private care is wrong. If private care is defensible then surely Dr McGlacken-Byrne, as “Chair of Doctors for Universal Healthcare”, also has a conflict of interest. Or at least a firm, preformed viewpoint.
Finally he suggests that “markets” and “two-tiered healthcare” are the wrong way to provide the service, using a comparison to the aviation industry to short his claim. A State-backed monopoly of Sláintecare is his solution.
It may seem ironic to those of us old enough to recall a single State airline which was so costly that, travelling to London, most took the ferry. It was only through competition with the private sector, in Ryanair, that anything approaching value for money was delivered.
Ultimately the argument is to eliminate the care that many patients choose to spend their money on and add them to a public sector barely able to cope. The assumption seems to be that this will transform the latter into the former. Why a “universal system” might improve what the letter writer portrays as inferior quality care, by further overloading it, is not clear. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN O’BRIEN,
Kinsale.
Cork.
