So, how is it exactly that a scheme initially budgeted for €19m a year has grown to €250 million a year?
Lest anyone think they are holier than thou on this issue, here’s Fine Gael in 2005:
Extension of medical card to over 70s/nursing home charges
The absence of financial controls and accountability for money spent on the medical card scheme was sharply criticised by both the Comptroller and Auditor General and by external consultants for the Department of Health, who investigated the scheme.The initial estimate was 39,000 people aged over 70, at a cost of ?19 million. However, this soon proved to be “significantly in error” as by December 2001 some 63,000 new over-70s had registered. The first full year of the scheme (2002) cost €126m.
The effect of the extension of the medical card to the Over 70s on long stay charges was also not considered by the Government. The 2001 Act which introduced the Over 70s medical card left no doubt that people holding the card could not be charged for long stay public care. This oversight, has cost the taxpayer approximately €400m since 2001.
So, in 2005, the government’s over-generosity/recklessness with too much spending was the problem, now it’s that the government was fixing its mistake?
Can someone point me to a rational explanation of the cost explosion beyond “long stay public care”? And can someone ask Enda if he still thinks - as this implies - that “long stay public care” should now be charged to medical card holders over 70?
In the meantime, can someone explain to me how long they think the Coyote of Irish public finances could keep running over the canyon without looking down and succumbing to gravity? Ye voted them in. THREE TIMES.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Billy Waters // Oct 21, 2008 at 9:01 pm
I agree. There is no point in complaining about anything if we as a people vote the same chancers and losers in again and again regardless of performance.
We are our own worst enemy and until we take responsibility and stop handing off problems to ‘them” and sitting on our hands we will still get nothing.
If we had a functioning democracy we would be able to elect or not elect those who we want. What we have is deadlock and the same old losers peddling the same old crap.
We deserve better but we also need to take responsibility and to SPEAK UP.
2 Dan Sullivan // Oct 22, 2008 at 12:19 am
The point in 2005 was that the government was demonstratively unable to plan anything with any degree of competence but this was masked as the coffers were full. And the implication of the reference to long stay care by quoting “The 2001 Act which introduced the Over 70s medical card left no doubt that people holding the card could not be charged for long stay public care. This oversight, has cost the taxpayer approximately €400m since 2001.” is that this was no mere oversight or victim of the law of unintended consequences but was in fact explicitly referred in the legislation. The fact is the government didn’t bother cost it at all, but sure wasn’t this was all fine because we were rolling in cash from the building boom.
I’ll be straight up about it and say I was personally opposed to giving this cover to everyone irrespective of their income or assets. And I would still think that extending universality when we haven’t identified how it is to be paid for is not appropriate. That’s just me. I would also say that removing what was given confuses the hell out of the situation as people made plans based on some services being free to them which now aren’t.
3 JC Skinner // Oct 22, 2008 at 2:30 am
I’m with Dan. I opposed this too. In fairness, the doctors neither asked for it nor particularly wanted it to begin with.
Which is why James Reilly (MD) now of the parish of FG but then running the IMO screwed the government to the wall on the deal.
As for the long term care, one would hope that Harney’s much vaunted ‘fair deal’ might address that at least in part.
But given that she told Marion Finucane last Saturday that it was either the med cards, cancer screening or the fair deal that was going to get axed, I’m going to punt that in the current cancer scandals context, it’s fair deal that will go.
4 PaulSweeney // Oct 22, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Complete inability to manage estimates of programmes is the key issue here. Also, this was a known event, and was not addressed when times were well. If it was “inequitable” then and it is “inequitable” now questions of WTF leap to mind.
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