how to fix the health service

[forest]

Health seems to be the biggest for voters
Its one of the bread and butter issues here and in all countries and an issue that many complain about

Ireland is listed in the 20’s out of the EU/EEA in relation to our health service, many go on about how to fix it and create a 1st class health service

I think I have come up with the answer on how to fix the health service in Ireland and like most things it’s the simplest most obvious solution
The OECD print reports ranking health services in various countries and the country that comes out in front (In Europe anyhow) is France

So here’s an idea in order to create a 1st class health service we copy a 1st class health service.
France is the best so we do what the French do (hopefully with fewer strikes)
Is this too simple or simply too obvious

[Pauli]

Health seems to be the biggest for voters
Its one of the bread and butter issues here and in all countries and an issue that many complain about

Ireland is listed in the 20’s out of the EU/EEA in relation to our health service, many go on about how to fix it and create a 1st class health service

I think I have come up with the answer on how to fix the health service in Ireland and like most things it’s the simplest most obvious solution
The OECD print reports ranking health services in various countries and the country that comes out in front (In Europe anyhow) is France

So here’s an idea in order to create a 1st class health service we copy a 1st class health service.
France is the best so we do what the French do (hopefully with fewer strikes)
Is this too simple or simply too obvious

I take it that this is a question. If so, it is a very good one, in light of what you wrote immediately beforehand. I suggest you address it to the Minister for Health, who is under the misguided impression that a system that effectively prohibits 50,000,000 people from accessing health care is somehow first class. So first class, in fact, that she would like us to have a similar health system.

[Limerick Lad]

The French Public Health Service has much to recommend it but the Irish electorate have decided to vote with their pockets by continuously electing political parties who offer reduced rates of taxation, seemingly unwilling to pay the higher taxes required to pay for first class public services not alone in health but in education and transport too.

[bagel]

Health seems to be the biggest for voters
Its one of the bread and butter issues here and in all countries and an issue that many complain about

Ireland is listed in the 20’s out of the EU/EEA in relation to our health service, many go on about how to fix it and create a 1st class health service

I think I have come up with the answer on how to fix the health service in Ireland and like most things it’s the simplest most obvious solution
The OECD print reports ranking health services in various countries and the country that comes out in front (In Europe anyhow) is France

So here’s an idea in order to create a 1st class health service we copy a 1st class health service.
France is the best so we do what the French do (hopefully with fewer strikes)
Is this too simple or simply too obvious

correct, it is an issue that many complain about;
however, if the results of the most recent general elections here are anything to go by, sadly health is only a minor issue for many, many voters;
a & e in uchg are operating a system whereby minor injuries are put into a queue seperate from more serious referrals;
this is supposed to ensure faster access to a doctor for the more serious referrals;
in practice (in my personal experience) it does not succeed and you wait just as long as before;
just another smokescreen!

[bagel]

The French Public Health Service has much to recommend it but the Irish electorate have decided to vote with their pockets by continuously electing political parties who offer reduced rates of taxation, seemingly unwilling to pay the higher taxes required to pay for first class public services not alone in health but in education and transport too.

i don't believe higher taxes are necessary or indeed the answer;
streamlining the current services to weed out the inefficiencies should result in improved services and/or the basis for top class public services;
the efficiency audit group streamlined, for instance, the defence forces and were supposed to tackle all other government service providers accordingly;
whatever happened that this did not materialise?

[ManOfReason]

• The health service is broken at every level.
  Pouring in more money into our health service in its current state will not improve performance.
  Frankly the problems of the Irish health serivce are caused to some degree by everyone of its 100k+ employees.
  Until there is wilingness by the employees to take responsibility and to change radically how they perform their jobs the system will not change.
  The government should get out of the business of running the health service and instead just pay for efficent quality healthcare, whoever provides it (even if it costs more).

[The Earl of Desmond]

The reaosn continential Europeans have good public services is because they pay for them - reforming how the health service operates is only part of the problem except in Ireland FF/PD think all you need to do is pour money into it and by magic it will all be fixed.

The pay for for paying more taxes is that you save on the other hand by not having to pay for private services so if you pay more for health you save by not paying VHI or BUPA etc.

As long as Harney is a Minister and the PDs exist the Irish health service is doomed. Her husband and the US corporations he is on the board of are calling the shots on health.

Time she was put out to pasture - no offence to horses or heffers

[Pax]

The French Public Health Service has much to recommend it but the Irish electorate have decided to vote with their pockets by continuously electing political parties who offer reduced rates of taxation, seemingly unwilling to pay the higher taxes required to pay for first class public services not alone in health but in education and transport too.

I don't think it's specifically an increased taxation issue more a willingness to spend on a single universal public health care system. For instance the Americans pay most per person but they get the worst outcomes amongst developed nations. As shown by studies* it's down to the fact they also have the highest for-profit sector.
Some of the most impressive health systems in the world pay less per person simply because they have an efficient public non-profit approach.

* (All (not just a majority) of peer-reviewed studies, --published in the most respected journals and going back decades,-- have shown for-profit privatised health care to be less efficient (to cost more), to deliver lower quality care with higher mortality rates (mainly due to perverse profit based incentives) and to be much more bureaucratic than publicly provided non-profit health care.

The ideology here is with those who are working 24/7 to privatise the Irish health system. Most specifically that's Harney, and the corporate-loaded HSE she created.)

[Limerick Lad]

The French Public Health Service has much to recommend it but the Irish electorate have decided to vote with their pockets by continuously electing political parties who offer reduced rates of taxation, seemingly unwilling to pay the higher taxes required to pay for first class public services not alone in health but in education and transport too.

i don't believe higher taxes are necessary or indeed the answer;
streamlining the current services to weed out the inefficiencies should result in improved services and/or the basis for top class public services;
the efficiency audit group streamlined, for instance, the defence forces and were supposed to tackle all other government service providers accordingly;
whatever happened that this did not materialise?

No one is saying that there should not be improvements in the efficiency of the Public Health Service but the deficit in infrastructural spending on the Public Health Service over decades of neglect was not really addressed during the boom period of the last decade or so, the Government preferring to make cuts in taxes rather than spend money on hospitals, schools and public transport.

[The Earl of Desmond]

When you think the UK was able to set up the NHS right after the war when it didn't have a penny to its name it puts it in perspective - we don't have any politicians who come remotely close to the quality of the politicians in the 1945 UK Labour government.

The lot we have now simply do not have the intellectual capability to put into practice any of the solutions offered to them. Can you imagine the likes of Cullen or MArtin or Roche or O'Dea coming up with something like the NHS or the Marshall Plan - eh no.