If you wished to make such a distinction you should have indicated this from the start. Certainly such a distinction in debates focusing on privatisation is not common. For example, in debates regarding the privatisation of bus transport services in Dublin, nobody was suggesting that the privatisation of some routes was not "proper privatisation". Nor did I hear Joe Higgins, Mary Lou McDonald or any of the trade unions argue that partial privatisation was fine so long as the whole system wasn't completely privatised.).
You really ar eonly hearing what you want to hear/read. Again I am not idologically opposed to privatisation of
anything. However health is something very specific within a community. It is not with due respect the same as running a shop or any other form of private enterprise. This is where you are being ideoligically blinkered. Using the rules that work in the wider business world and applying them simplictically to something as morally and structurally complexed as providing equitable health care for all citizens is ideologally blinkered.
This makes the reasons advanced by you for voting against the Lisbon Treaty even more suspect in my opinion, since no country in Europe has a purely privatised healthcare system so it can hardly be something that other countries will attempt to foister on us against our will.).
See this is where you are very wrong. A few things in what you say are interesting. i.e "foistering on us against our will" maybe you see this as a bad thing too subconsciencly? Again because there is blinkered ideologs at the heart of the european project who believe in treating health care as any other service they believe that there should be
no distortion or unfair government interference in the market place. Now I seem to remember that some schools were forced to pay for thier own water etc recently because of this very reason.
it is not difficult to see that at some future time that this argument could be put in place against government interference in the health market place.
No I have been consistent in my claims. I'd like if the healthcare system required no government funding at all but acknowledge this is extremely unlikely. However, I believe we could massively improve our existing system if the government restricted its role to one of regulation rather than actual service provision.)
Even within a government regulated private system companies have to make a profit. This is fine in any other industry but in health it leads to inequity.
75% of French hospitals are privately owned and privately run on a for-profit basis. Again I reiterate, you are debating whether or not the cost of medical care should be socialised (like France) or not. Privatisation is irrelevant in this debate, as there is no reason why the service for which the cost has been socialised cannot be provided for privately, publically or through a mixture of both. ).
Where do you get this figure from exactly? Well if this argument is not about purely privatised health care what it is about. Are you telling me that a system run by the private sector but payed for by the government is privatesed Health care in the classical sence of pure privatisation? And the french system is farmore complex than you are arguing in terms of its outward apperence of privatisation but the reality of government funding and regulation> I suggest you read the artical I cited in an earlier post to clear up your confusion.
If you owned a supermarket in an area of high unemployment, where all of your customers were in receipt of social welfare, would you claim that your shop was "essentially a publically run service"? In a debate with me about whether food distribution in this country should be publically or privately provided, would you claim that a "purely privatised" food distribution system meant those without jobs must starve?
Equating food distribution with the health needs of people does not work I am afraid. See you believe that cost effective yellow pack health care can be given to the huddled masses while the rich can shop at the Harrods of heath care. Now this is fine if you believe in a service that is unequtable. Again I do not. Weather you like ot or not.
But in your lassez faire ideological free competition world these people would not get the dole so i suppose they would starve. NO Just leave it to the market place to take care of them?????
If you don't believe the private sector can deliver better healthcare than the public sector why then do you purchase private healthcare? Surely this is contradictory?
When will you ever listen to what i am actually talking about. I want equitable health care for all. I believe the state should fund those who cannot fund their own health care. Those who can can look after themselves. I also believe that community run hospitals with a not for profit motive are the best mechenism to achieve this.
Also does the public sector currently offer anything even remotely resembling "efficient, clean, people-centred hospitals". Equity of access and treatment can be tackled in a number of ways without necessarily requiring the government to own and run hospitals.
There are very good examples of the american system where community not for profit hospitals are the leading providers of quality health care. And Irish hospitals and the public system does by and large provide people centered care. As far as clean goes some one earlier commented on how the cleaning our hospitals way put out to tender to the private sector standards of cleanleness have decreased.
Two points:
.[/quote] 1. The cost of health care should be decreasing as a consequence of improvement in technologies, shorter recuperation times from surgical procedures, better treatments and increasing specialisation of nurses and doctors. This is the best way in the long term to ensure equity of access to all..[/quote]
Absolutly wrong. Health care inflation is many factors above ordinary inflation. And this is the way it is always going to be. Research new products drugs etc are hugely expensive. IN a private run system the government because of reduction in tax take may not be able to fund this expencive health care for people who cannot afford topay for insurance. Setting up the further inequity between those who can and those who cannot pay.
2. If this divide is going to exist then it exists already as a function of our welfare system. Individuals on welfare already have most of their medical costs subsidised. I fail to see how there will be any great increase in antagonisation especially if the PAYE sector is also availing of the lower medical costs and taxation that will result from privatisation.
A person on welfare or those in work but on low incomes already are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to health care in ireland. For example I know of someone who had lung cancer on a medical card. Complained about painss in his chest to GP and was refered to a consultant. Took 9 months for him to see one. Died 6 months later. If he had seen consultant earlier he may have got 5 more years with his family. See you do not see the connect between the provision of quality health care and a sence of the morality that a community has for itself and those who are vunerable. YOu want to leave it to the whim of the market. We see in every aspect of life inequity. Some people can afford to buy a rollsroyce some a bycycle. Some people can afford to goon expensive holidays some cant. This is fine everyone in the world cannot have equity in this respect. That would be ridiculous. Because these are consumerable good and services. See the unmoral world of business creates winners and loosers. It must do so. I am not critizing this. It is, if you like commercial darwinism. Well sometimes the community must step in a set up supports for those who cannot help themselves. what you are advocating in a purely privatised system is a form of social darwinism where the weak die and the strong survive.
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