Enda opens the election campaign; and it's one all between Fahey and Grealish

Well, Enda Kenny could hardly have chosen a more appropriate week in which to try to convince the electorate that really they would fare better under a new health regime – with people’s minds firmly fixed on those thousands of unopened doctors’ referral letters in Tallaght Hospital.

The unopened letters may have been one way – though an extraordinarily impractical one! – of limiting the growth of the waiting lists. And one of the central planks of the Fine Gael new health policy, which is now being outlined around the country, is the elimination of those waiting lists where patients awaiting treatment now number 150,000, according to FG.

Enda Kenny and FG Health Spokesman Dr. James O’Reilly were in Galway this week as part of a nationwide campaign to outline the alternative health service which they say could be completed in five years, transforming our health system – and get action on key areas like those waiting lists, patients on trolleys in A&E units, and end the situation where in many cases, you may have to ‘go private’ if you want action on a health problem.

It all sounds like the first shots in a general election campaign in which one of the key areas will be health services. And those posters up around the county of Kenny and Dr. O’Reilly have the ‘election’ feel about them.

The new health policy is one outcome of a move in 2008 by Enda Kenny who set up a Fine Gael health commission to brain-storm on what could be done to get reform a two-tier health system – one public, one private.

Interestingly, some of the key inputs to that think-tank and the new policy came from Dr. John Barton, the Ballinasloe cardiologist who stood for FG in the 2007 General Election in Galway East, where he got almost 5,000 votes. He is one of five contenders for a nomination for FG in the next General Election in Galway East.

The country to which Enda Kenny continually points is The Netherlands. He says Fine Gael have studied health services in a number of other countries. For instance, in a 450-bed hospital he had visited in The Hague, people coming in were seen within ten minutes; the longest time you would be there, unless you had to be admitted, would be two-and-a-half hours, and, meantime, there were no patients on trolleys.

“In the Netherlands, they have a 17million population and spend €3,500 per head of population on health services. They have no waiting lists and no patients on trolleys. Here we spend almost €5,000 per head of population and have a system that simply does not deliver. I am determined to change that.

“Our changes will end the two-tier system, eliminate waiting lists, increase primary care in communities and will be based on universal health insurance for all,” the Fine Gael leader said this week.

Essentially, Kenny added, the two-tier health system meant that, if you had the money to ‘go private,’ you could be treated privately in a matter of weeks, while, if you were dependant the public system, you might wait years. The health crisis of the past week showed that if your GP referral letter happened to end up in ‘that box’ in Tallaght Hospital, you might never be reached.

Said Kenny: “I suppose there could hardly have been a week when people were more likely to respond to an initiative on health care .... though I have to say that the revelation that letters of referral weren’t even being opened, is extraordinary and utterly shocking. I only hope it was not happening elsewhere.”

Massive waiting lists were certainly at the background of most people’s minds as one of the symptoms of a health service delivery system which was sick.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.