This is what our 2 tier health service does!!

[farnaby]

Consultants set up private hospitals and charge far more to do the operations....get paid far more for less work...leave the public hospitals and then what happens????

A number of possibilities:
- public health service becomes more efficient as consultants are dedicated
- demand for private consultants is limited, not all will migrate to private care even if they want to
- it would be possible to make consultants spend a mandatory amount of time working solely for the state health service, as payback for the amount invested in them as medical students and allowing them to build up experience

Sounds feasible to me.

[Aindriu]

[quote=Dublinguy]

That is just another reason why private healtcare is immoral. He gets paid by the HSE AND works on the side - which is what he is doing.

It is like garda drawing his salary AND working as a private security guard. There would be uproar at that but we allow consultants to do the same thing!

Your solution would be - get rid of health insurance - tell the consultants they do no private practice and pay them 200k a year....

Consultants set up private hospitals and charge far more to do the operations....get paid far more for less work...leave the public hospitals and then what happens????

Simple! Lock them into contracts so they have to give a set number of years back to the HSE after being promoted to consultant grade.

We simply have to stop seeing health care as a business where only those who can afford get it and see it as a basic human right. To do otherwise is immoral sin é.

[joel]

[quote=Aindriu]

That is just another reason why private healtcare is immoral. He gets paid by the HSE AND works on the side - which is what he is doing.

It is like garda drawing his salary AND working as a private security guard. There would be uproar at that but we allow consultants to do the same thing!

But don't you know that the Market is better than the State? - get with the program.

[Akrasia]

Its a disgrace .
I wonder how long it will take the p.ie pd element to defend it ? huffing and puffing about medical card "spongers" , calling anyone who is appalled a communist etc.....

This has been going on long before the PDs existed. Mary Harney is trying to fix it and the consultants contracts and the one list will go along way.

All parties who have been in govt over the last 30-50 years havnt done much to prevent this.

Mary Harney believes in Homeopathy? (The best way to cure a disease is by giving people more of the disease)

The best way to cure a two tier health care system is to make it even more exclusionary?

Someone said that people take out health insurance because they are afraid to not have it. That's a deliberate strategy, starve the beast. Make the public health service so bad that people will believe they have no choice but to go private. (even as the cost of private health insurance is about to skyrocket by up to 30% in the coming weeks, and as Mary Harney is forcing the VHI to keep a higher cash reserve which will make the VHI more expensive all in the interest of protecting the profits of private insurer)

[HollyB]

That is just another reason why private healtcare is immoral. He gets paid by the HSE AND works on the side - which is what he is doing.

Chances are, the consultant being paid by the HSE is being paid for a set working week - ie. 35 hours a week, or similar. Since private patients (or at least the vast majority of them) also pay taxes that support the HSE, then perhaps he is able to see them for a set number of hours during this working week - it'd depend on his contract.

If he's working with private patients for extra hours outside his set working week, and this is not (a) prohibited under his contract or (b) making him so exhausted that he's compromising his ability to care for his patients, I don't see it as immoral.

The alternative would be two completely separate health systems, and if there's more money to be made in the private system than in the public, where are the best doctors likely to end up? It's also very possible that those with the resources to pay for private insurance would argue that the health levy they pay should be redirected to the private health system they will be availing of - which means less money for the public hospitals.

[HollyB]

it would be possible to make consultants spend a mandatory amount of time working solely for the state health service, as payback for the amount invested in them as medical students and allowing them to build up experience

I think that you could find that one problematic. Leaving aside that it would essentially be forcing them into a form of indentured service, it would be a very slippery slope, as the same argument could be made for anyone who has availed of a third-level education.

From primary level onwards, money is invested in a child's education. When that child graduates from secondary school, or from third-level, should he or she then be compelled to work for the public service, regardless of his or her personal preferences, as "payback" for the money invested in their education?