Discretionary medical card withdrawals
Kelly attacks the centralised medical-card system, missing files and the withdrawal of discretionary cards, especially from cancer patients. Exchanges with Byrne and O’Brien become partisan, while the Chair repeatedly urges order.
I agree with Senator Ó Clochartaigh about the debacle over the review of medical cards and the taking of discretionary medical cards from people. It is amusing that people are standing up and listening to Ombudsman reporting on this, while in the past three years I have repeatedly highlighted the issue of files going missing between Clontarf and Finglas. It is time to review and revisit the operation of the PCRS. I never agreed with the centralisation of the medical card system. It is absolutely appalling that the HSE can now bring in a German company to review medical cards. It has acted cynically on these issues.
It makes me laugh to see the high moral ground that has been taken by Fianna Fáil on the review of medical cards and discretionary medical cards. Let me remind the Members opposite that when they were in Government - I was a county councillor between 2004 and 2009-----
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He was handing them out to all his constituents.
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I wrote on numerous occasions to the then Minister for Heath and Children, Mary Harney, and I asked that medical cards be made available to cancer patients. Repeatedly she refused, pointing out that there was very little discretion-----
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The person to whom you gave the discretionary medical card.
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-----and that one had to abide by the guidelines.
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The previous speaker did not have a question for the Leader. Let me conclude with this point. My representations to the Minister were followed a year later by representations from her to me on behalf of a woman who had an underactive thyroid. She could not believe a medical card had not been made available as a matter of course because this person had an underactive thyroid.
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But she was forgetting about the people who had cancer. These are the people we are talking about today. These people are suffering as their medical cards have been withdrawn-----
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Bring the letters in here, because there have been a few Labour Party guys who claimed that things happened when they did not actually happen.
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-----but the Fianna Fáil Party did exactly the same thing when it was in Government.