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Why going Dutch is going for broke
national |
anti-capitalism |
feature
Saturday April 02, 2011 00:09 by Marie O Connor
Fine Gael's UnFairCare policy
Fine Gael’s UnFairCare policy demands more scrutiny. At a time when support for the Dutch model is declining in its country of origin, Fine Gael proposes to import this charter for privateers into Ireland. Marie O'Connor looks at Dominic Haugh's study, which reveals an unaffordable three-tier system, growing waiting lists, cancelled operations, out of control budgets, bankrupt hospitals, professional gravy trains and spawning bureaucracies, all encouraged by pro market think-tanks. Related Links: Nurses call for Health system based on social solidarity not private profit | Thousands March to Defend health Services in Letterkenny | Over 15,000 protest health cuts in Clonmel | HSE Cuts Mental Health Funding Even Further | Plenty of money for the Bailouts. Very little for Health and the People | ‘The Great Gas Giveaway; How the Elites Have Gambled Our Health And Wealth’ | Free marketeering in health | Beacon's Co-location' hospital in Cork draws nearer. See Anger as Cork health workers fight on two fronts ...
Going Dutch will make private health insurance compulsory for everyone. Around 75% of healthcare funding will still come from taxation, however. The state––taxpayers–– will pay for medical card holders and children up to 18 years of age, and give those on low incomes an allowance payable to their chosen insurance company. Many taxpayers will pay on the triple, once through general taxation, a second time through mandatory insurance premiums and once more through employee deductions.
by Louise Sun Mar 27, 2011 15:19
An interesting article. |
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Jump To Comment: 7 6 5 4 3 2 1"The Dutch Government now deducts insurance premiums at source from wages and welfare payments of uninsured and defaulting citizens and imposes significant fines for non-payment. "
Now I see the angle. Its essentially a neat way of attacking social welfare and the low paid through the backdoor while giving public money to private companies.
People were insane to elect these cynical neoliberal scumbags after years of FF crooks. It must be either stockholm syndrome or utter stupidity. Dog help us
You had better organise a rally now or you will end up like the Dutch.
A lot of Dutch people have to go to the hand out spots for their food and they cannot afford clothes either.
Ireland has only a few food handout spots and they are sponsored by the people. The sponsoring will go as soon as this new 'form of tax' is raised in the form of insurance sc(a)m(e). People will not be able to give to charities.
Get your runners on and go for a healthy approach: Rally to keep your health system!
Assemble a small group. Make a plan. State your date and time.
..its less a public health service, and increasingly a private sickness industry. Not mentally healthy, for starters. But we're up against that corporate PR juggernaut. Yankee Big-Pharma would not approve a change. It might effect their economic health. Their spin gets more doctoring than we do.
You raise a good point about the ill-health system. It seems we deem things a success when we say the health system has treated say 200,000 people in hospital this year compared to some smaller figure some other year.
In one sense, the implicit good message would be that the health system is therefore more efficient but stepping back, surely it is a measure of the failure of the entire system that so many peope are sick and indeed much has to do with our lifestyles whether it be bad diets, lack of exercise with too much driving and not enough walking, and of course the insidious background of pollution.
If we really want to improve the nations health and cut the costs to the health system, why not ban all junk food advertising, ban all vending machines with sugary soft drinks and other junk in schools. Instead promote healthy eating and exercise.
We also need to massively change our transport policies and subsidize public transport not impose cuts on it. People who take public transport walk more than those who drive.
And sticking with transport it has been established for at least 2 decades that particle dust known as PM10 and PM50 particles cause thousands of deaths per year in a country like the UK and account for even more respitory problems all of which lands on the cost of society through the burden of diverting extra resources in the health system to deal with it. Heavy traffic is a source of these particles.
It is quite obvious that basing a health system on profit which our government is trying to do, will cause all sorts of unscrupulous activity. For one there would be absolutely no incentive to improve peoples overall health and the system would automatically want a system where people are constantly in need of medicines and treatments. Given the tendencies in the sytem already, it is well on the way down that path.
We need a health service not an ill-health service. People need to be trained from an early age to look after their health. Many health conditions respond well to dietary and lifestyle programmes. However, for those that don't, of course we need doctors, nurses and so on and always will. First thing we should analyse is why most people end up in hospital and implement ways of cutting this down.
The health system is a big business and pharma dominated. Check out Ralph Moss's book ' Cancer is Business not Medicine" and also look at the work of Ralph Nader and iatrogenic illnesses.
Yes we do need a new model of health care but I argue that it should be one that is not dominated by the pharmaceutical industry which is the case presently.
www.macliam.org/Health/AnalysisFineGaelFaircare.pdf
Editor: The above report has now been uploaded to Indymedia and is available here. Just click on the link below to get the report
Critical Analysis of Fine Gael FairCare Health System 0.25 Mb