Health Campaign Conference

by John Meehan - CAEUC (Vote No to the Lisbon Treaty) Fri Apr 25, 2008 18:30

Campaign Against EU Constitution – NO to Lisbon Treaty
YES to Publicly Funded Healthcare
NO to the Lisbon Treaty

The Irish healthcare system is in crisis and every day we hear new stories about people being denied treatment, waiting for days on trolleys and further cutbacks in essential services.
The health service is being driven into crisis by a Fianna Fail-PD-Green government whose aim is to outsource and privatise as much as possible. There are already American private health corporations, some of which are mired by healthcare fraud, involved in Harney's co-located private hospitals.
The Lisbon Treaty, which we will vote on in June, would make it harder to stop this. If we don't like what our government does we can mobilise and demand change, or we can vote them out. But policies put in place by Lisbon would be almost impossible to change and would create international obstacles to getting a decent public health service.
At present there are protests over the deal that EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson is negotiating on agriculture at the WTO. But even if they wanted to, the Irish government cannot block Mandelson's proposals because the power of individual member states to veto EU proposals on trade in agriculture was given away in the Treaty of Amsterdam. Lisbon would give away the power to veto international trade agreements in health, education and social services
How would Lisbon put our health care at risk?
Lisbon would establish in treaty law, which cannot later be changed, the principle of international trade in all public services including health, education and social services. It would also give the EU the power to issue guidelines to governments on how they manage their budgets and how they finance public services. (Art 16, 104 and 115). This would put all public services under pressure to compete with private for-profit providers.
The experience in Britain, Canada and Australia shows that as more health services are privatised, insurance premiums rise, the quality of care falls and public waiting lists get longer. While EU treaties allow our governments to set out general policy for health care, when it comes to actually delivering services the competition rules of the EU apply. The European Commission and the European Court of Justice make this clear: private contractors must be allowed compete to deliver any parts of a service for which charges can be levied. This already applies to outsourced contracts, and could also be applied to ‘internal’ charges between hospital departments.
Catering and cleaning are already outsourced, and we know that contract cleaning has helped spread MRSA. Ambulances, lab testing, radiology - and some cancer treatment - are already being privatised. International agreements through the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to let multinationals deliver these services would make it even harder to reverse privatisation and repair the damage. Lisbon would make it easier for the EU to make these international agreements.
Health: just another service for sale?
Lisbon would remove the unrestricted power to veto proposals for international trade in health, education and social services that the EU makes on our behalf in the GATS. These trade agreements involve the removal of regulations so that transnationals can compete to run the service. Details of the EU's proposals are kept secret until the deal is finalised, both at present and under Lisbon. We don't know today what public services that Micheal Martin is offering to Mandelson to include in the EU's bargaining position; nor which of our services other countries are asking be opened for their multinationals. But we do know that Mandelson, the Commission and Lisbon promote privatisation.
Under Lisbon a veto would only be available when trade would “risk seriously disturbing the national organisation of such services and prejudicing the responsibility of Member States to deliver them” (Art 188c). This risk is not defined in the treaty, and it would be very hard to prove. As long as 55% of the Council of Ministers agreed with a trade proposal, the rest would be overruled. And the voting system in Lisbon would increase the weight of bigger states: the German vote would rise from 8.4% to 16.7%; Britain from 8.4% to 12%; while Ireland would go from 2% to 0.8%. What supporters of Lisbon call 'greater efficiency' is actually a mechanism to outvote objections to unpopular policies.
Vote NO to Lisbon - say YES to Public Services
Arguments that health and social care would be protected under Lisbon simply don't hold water. If there is no intention to turn as much of these services as possible into private businesses (this is what 'trade' means), why does the Treaty have a clause that limits the veto on such trade?
The EU's commitment to 'liberalise trade in services', strengthened by Lisbon, will only make our health service worse. Lisbon would help put profitability rather than quality of care at the centre of our services. It should be rejected.

Find out about the Lisbon Treaty. Visit our website, come to our meetings or invite a speaker to one of your meetings. You can make a contribution through our website. Our next meeting is on Wed 7th of May at 20.00 in the Teachers Club, Parnell Sq, Dublin.
www.sayno.ie