HOSPITAL CO-LOCATION DECISION CONDEMNED

The decision by the Government and the HSE to proceed with proposals to allow developers to co-locate and construct private for-profit hospitals on the grounds of public hospitals, including the grounds of Sligo General Hospital, has been condemned by Independent Socialist councillor Declan Bree.

Cllr Bree, who is the outgoing Chairman of the Regional Health Forum West said today that, “The co-location of private hospitals on public lands is the most damaging and extreme step in Minister Harney’s determination to hand over significant elements of the Irish health service to the private sector.

“Everyone who is genuinely concerned about the future of our health system has opposed the Governments proposals to provide lands at our public hospitals for the construction of private hospitals. 

“At the most recent conference of the Irish Medical Organisation doctors committed to the public health service, as opposed to those who see health as a source of speculation or profit, questioned Government policy in facilitating private hospitals with generous tax breaks and other concessions.   Many other bodies including the Regional Health Forum, the Congress of Trade Unions, the Irish Nurses Organisation and numerous others have declared their opposition to co-location.

“The reality is that the Government is willing to give hundreds of millions of Euro in tax breaks to profit-seeking speculators, to build for-profit hospitals on the grounds of  public hospitals and this policy is been driven by Mary Harney's ideological commitment to for-profit medicine.

“Minister Harney and the government claim these private hospitals will provide 1,000 beds for private patients thus freeing up 1,000 beds in public hospitals and they claim that the public sector can’t provide these beds as fast and as cheaply as the private sector. This is blatantly untrue. Co-located hospitals are the most expensive way to provide extra beds.  The fact is that private investors will get tax breaks that will cost the state €500 million over seven years.

“It is a public scandal to hand just under half a billion euro of taxpayers money to developers to provide 1,000 beds while the same money spent wisely would provide 1,200 public beds.

“On top of this, the income lost to public hospitals from the transfer of private patients in the same period will be €980 million, which makes a minimum cost to taxpayers of €1.5 billion.” said Cllr Bree.

“And of course private patients will be asked to pay the full economic costs of their care in the co-located hospitals: this means an increase of 40% at least, in their current private health insurance.

“It must also be remembered that a private hospital bed is not as good as a public hospital bed because private hospitals do not provide the full integrated health care that public hospitals provide.  These new private hospitals will not provide the kind of multi-disciplinary care which patients require after major surgery, they will cherry pick the less expensive procedures leaving the complex cases and the chronically ill to the public hospitals – because you can’t make a profit from the chronically ill!

“Co-located private hospitals will also further the current perverse incentives provided for our doctors in our two-tier system.  The fact is that when private hospitals proceed to develop on public hospital grounds there will be a net increase in private beds at taxpayers’ expense; the two-tier system will be further institutionalised and if public consultants are shareholders in the private hospital, they will have an added incentive to favour treating patients there.

“Co-location is just the start.  Minister Harney and the government are planning to strip our public health service bare, transferring as much of it as they can into the hands of private health companies.

“If we are to avoid healthcare being bought and sold as a commodity, and if we are to avoid the type of primitive health system that exists in the USA, then we must continue to resist these privatisation proposals.” Cllr Bree said.