Dublin South West Sinn F\u00e9in TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has expressed his utter disgust at the\u00a0news that the government is considering opening up more of the health\u00a0service to privatisation, saying that this system would lead directly\u00a0to health care becoming a commodity, and would inevitably lead to\u00a0profit being the driving force rather than patient care<\/p>\n
Crowe’s comments come after Minister for Health Leo Varadkar made a\u00a0speech suggesting that under performing hospitals would be opened up to\u00a0private interests and follows criticism of staff in Tallaght Hospital\u00a0by Taoiseach Enda Kenny,\u00a0who blamed staff for elderly patients being left on trolleys in Accident &\u00a0Emergency<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe Fine Gael \/ Labour government, faced with the enormity of the\u00a0challenge of dealing with\u00a0 a broken health system through their cuts\u00a0and mismanagement, have utterly failed in their obligation to\u00a0alleviate the suffering caused by those very same policies and are now\u00a0opting for privatisation that will reinforce health care becoming\u00a0a commodity\u201cThe latest notion from this government is that hospitals which\u00a0\u2018consistently under perform\u2019 would see their management passed over to\u00a0a private operator. I am utterly disgusted to think of how this would\u00a0impact on seriously ill patients who would then be at the mercy of a\u00a0profit driven margin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n“Such policy has been a disaster in other countries and we only have to\u00a0look across the water in Britain to see the consequences of the\u00a0Conservatives roll out of this kind of initiative. In the United\u00a0States, corporate private medicine has also led to a heartless, more\u00a0expensive care model that is less efficient and with poorer outcomes.\u201cMinister Varadkar talks of \u2018incentivising\u2019 hospitals to do more work.\u00a0His work harder notion includes already overstretched men and women in\u00a0our hospitals who will be asked to do even more. This is happening\u00a0with a backdrop of nurses in St. Vincent\u2019s having been forced to take\u00a0industrial action to highlight the dangerous situation facing patients\u00a0there with overcrowding, and a shortage of beds and key staff.<\/p>\n\u201cThis new work ethic will also be driven by the 1,000 extra\u00a0 nurses\u00a0announced in the budget, all the while ignoring Minister Kathleen\u00a0Lynch’s announcement that 1,500 nurses will actually retire from mental\u00a0health services, leaving 500 less to do work on wards.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo doubt he will be asking 4th year nurses to do more. Trainees\u00a0currently work a 39 hour week for a miserly \u20ac6.95 an hour.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis work harder notion should apply to his own leadership\u00a0that concentrates on pronouncements rather than positive announcements, such as much needed\u00a0resources like primary care, step down beds and reduced\u00a0numbers on trolleys.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n\u201cOur public health service is severely under resourced, that\u2019s a fact\u00a0not a notion. It requires a commitment, not only of\u00a0 new investment, but\u00a0to a public ownership model. Patient care needs to be at the centre\u00a0of our health system not the pursuit of profit.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u201cSinn F\u00e9in is committed to delivering a world-class system of\u00a0universal health care that is accessed on the basis of need, free at\u00a0the point of delivery, and funded by progressive taxation to the\u00a0Irish state. We believe that the majority of taxpayers if given the\u00a0option would opt for this system over a profit driven system that\u00a0reduces seriously ill people to a numbers or a cash figure.”<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\nENDS<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dublin South West Sinn F\u00e9in TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has expressed his utter disgust at the\u00a0news that the government is considering opening up more of the health\u00a0service to privatisation, saying that this system would lead directly\u00a0to health care becoming a commodity, and would inevitably lead to\u00a0profit being the driving force rather than patient care Crowe’s comments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,198,181],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-nurses","category-tallaght-hospital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2384"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2387,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384\/revisions\/2387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}