FF TD quits party over medical card issue

[goosebump]

No it isn't nearly twice the minimum wage. The minimum wage is about €25,000. For two people, that's €50,000 between them.

Here you go:

This is about the fact that an over-70s couple with total pension income equivalent to a job that pays just half the minimum wage WILL NOT qualify for a medical card.

If you worked 40 hours a week in a minimum-wage (€8.60) job, and had 3 weeks holidays, you'd make about 17k per year.

[st3ph3n]

Are you on crack or something? The minimum wage is nowhere near €25k.

If you're on minimum wage you earn €8.65 per hour. Assuming you work 40 hours per week every single week of the year, you'd have gross pay of €17992 for the year.

[goosebump]

Are you on crack or something? The minimum wage is nowhere near €25k.

If you're on minimum wage you earn €8.65 per hour. Assuming you work 40 hours per week every single week of the year, you'd have gross pay of €17992 for the year.

Precisely.

Hence the claim that a couple with a total income of half the minimum wage will not qualify for the card is total rubbish.

The only couples who will not qualify for a *full card* are couples with total incomes > €35k or with savings > €72k.

[PhoenixIreland]

are you on crack or something? The minimum wage is nowhere near €25k.

If you're on minimum wage you earn €8.65 per hour. Assuming you work 40 hours per week every single week of the year, you'd have gross pay of €17992 for the year.

no errr...you get err....free electricity...and er....free heating...and er....free bus passs....er....****************************** welfare queens....er........er......commies!

[rjh]

Harney and Lenihan appear to be blatantly contradicting each other this pm....

Harney - no change , no climbdown

Lenihan - sorry for distress caused, a process is in place etc etc

Harney to resign within 48 hours?

Here's hoping......


One other point I would like to make that posters on this site may be unaware of. The GPs are seriously divided on this issue, the IMO position is very unclear

You see - there are those GPs who work in deprived and rural areas who have many patients who are unemployed, impoverished etc - they get as little as 80euro per medical card for some of these patients

Meanwhile the lads up in Foxrock see only private patients , these patients turn 70 and all of a sudden voila - a nice clean, lucrative medical card list without having to go near the deprived/rural area.

The consequences have been most interesting - leftie GPs would love nothing more than to see the system abandoned in favour of additional payments for those working in deprived/rural areas whereas the foxrock brigade want to keep the over 70 unaltered and are already getting legal opinion on how to stop any changes

The situation is further complicated by the fact that GPs are currently in the process of negotiating a new contract with the state. The HSE have completely cocked this process up and the negotiations have gone no-where for the last 3 years until the competition authority reports (remember the pharmacists?)

All in all - a mess

My own view is that the over 70 card should be retained but that we must encourage GPs to work where they are needed not where the easy cash is. Punishing a section of elderly people to achieve this makes no sense and is politically stupid

Unfortunately, the younger ranks of GPs are currently dominated by (mostly female) D4 types who regard two days a week of work in cushy surgeries as being an achievement. They avoid rural Ireland and avoid deprived areas. Most of them don't even bother applying for a medical card list.

It should also be remembered that it is very difficult for younger Doctors to get medical card lists - the process is murky and often fraught with difficulty. basically, a lot of us get shafted by the old boys some of whom are making half a million a year.

That is the real issue. The over-70s medical card is not.

Keep the card but reform Irish GP - free up medical card lists and incentivise young Doctors to work while penalising those who could not be ar5ed.

That is the solution.

Of course that is far too complex for HSE clowns or their political buddies to grasp.

[hiding behind a poster]

Here you go:

Apologies, I was looking at another calculation. But in fact this emphasises the point - as stephen says, the minimum wage is about €17k per annum. 2 people on the minimum wage would make a total of 34k per annum. But two pensioners, with a total of just 25k per annum from their state pension, would be on 9k LESS than if they were BOTH in minimum wage jobs - and neither would be eligible for a full medical card. That is disgraceful.

[droghedasouth]

Was anybody listening to Lenihan on the Rodney Rice program at 1.00?

He said that the government would sort out the problem by January 1 2009, a very ambiguous statement thah his father would be proud of.

Yet just over an hour earlier Mary Harney said on marion Finucane that there would be no change.

Check the rte story if you want to confirm.
RTÉ News: Lenihan regrets medical card distress

BTW, I loved Joan Burton's line that millionaires should be entitled to the free medical card above 70 but that they shaould also pay their taxes.
Excellent riposte to all this PD ideology against a universal benefit.


Who is telling the truth?
Does anyone know WTF is going on?

PS - I just love everytime I hear a minister saying how much time thay speny over this decision.
And they still got it wrong.

[tic tac man]

Precisely.

Hence the claim that a couple with a total income of half the minimum wage will not qualify for the card is total rubbish.

The only couples who will not qualify for a *full card* are couples with total incomes > €35k or with savings > €72k.

You might have been right on the detail, but are you comfortable with the fact that somebody earning anything more than 70% of the minimum wage won't qualify for a medical card?

[Rabbitsears]

I have no doubt that Fianna Fáil are in a right panic over this - it's my fervent hope that a few independent minded FF backbenchers vote against the scrapping of the over 70s Medical Card.

[Schuhart]

Guilty of the same offence as you Schuhart, but despite your admission of guilt in not doing enough to stop people voting in FF, you still give FF too much credit. Their move on the medical cards cannot be isolated and praised in the way that you isolate and praise it. The budget was a cod, and it is one part of the cod. That said, you are right to point out that retreating into rhetoric undermines our ability to get through what we must deal with.

I really do agree with your essential point of the budget being a cod. My concern is that dissent is being mobilised around the wrong issue in the wrong way. If the message to the political class is we don’t want them messing with this expensive tokenism, particularly if it’s a hint that asset rich pensioners might be expected to part with some of their wealth to contribute to the costs of the society they live in rather than be left intact for relatives to inherit, then than closes off an array of correct actions. If, on the other hand, they notice the builder bailout didn’t really get legs, then clearly they’ll know they can combust large sums of money in that kind of thing again.

I’d say in substance we don’t disagree, and I liked the letter from that doctor that you posted which I think did effectively pose the question of why we allow the resources we notionally allocate to battle disadvantage to be distorted in this way. But I think we differ on tactics, or something of that nature.

That means that a couple who have a joint income of €24k *after they have paid all housing and medical costs, and tax,* will still qualify for a full card.

They are also allowed to have savings of up to €72,000.

Very useful information. This blows all the nonsense out of the water. Speaking of which

Unfortunately, the younger ranks of GPs are currently dominated by (mostly female) D4 types who regard two days a week of work in cushy surgeries as being an achievement. They avoid rural Ireland and avoid deprived areas. Most of them don't even bother applying for a medical card list.

It should also be remembered that it is very difficult for younger Doctors to get medical card lists - the process is murky and often fraught with difficulty. basically, a lot of us get shafted by the old boys some of whom are making half a million a year.

I see. So simultaneously it’s a combination of there being no doctors willing to work in deprived areas with, when they get there, no chance of them getting a medical card list anyway.

Can you see (and I don’t expect you can, but I’ll try anyway) any element of hysteria in your depiction of the situation? I mean, you’re telling us that the deprived area practices are unattractive, and that seems credible. But you’re also telling us that they’re sown up by existing doctors. Like oh my God roish, even if all the doctors were not, like, totally D4 women, they still wouldn’t get practices?

I think you need to clear your head on this before approaching a keyboard. Remember, the weight of your argument is not improved by its weight in pages when printed out.

Keep the card but reform Irish GP - free up medical card lists and incentivise young Doctors to work while penalising those who could not be ar5ed.

God forbid that any solution might involve any doctor earning less – whether they’re old boys making half a million or D4 women who wouldn’t give a bogger a chance of a ride.