It pains me to sit around and watch the situation that has evolved in less than a week over Wednesday’s budget announcement that the automatic right to a medical card for those Irish residents over the age of 70 was being abolished.
At last word, Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who (wisely ) postponed a trip to China to deal with the escalating controversy, announced that the new plan would go ahead in January of 2009, but in a different form. What that different form is, no one really knows just yet. But for some reason I have a feeling that unless it is a complete reversal back to the original plan, it is never going to go over well.
I, for one, am not really seeing what the issue is here. Recession or no recession, there is no excuse for leaving one of your most vulnerable citizen groups without a wish or a hope.
You see, I grew up in Canada, a country celebrated for their amazing universal health care system which allows everyone, the young, the old, and all those in between, to have free access to the medical services that keep them healthy and happy. And that’s the way it is, recession or no recession.
Maybe I’m just biased because I grew up having it so good, but I hardly understand why it isn’t possible to have a system like this in every country? I mean, really, if a country almost seven times the size of Ireland can find some way to get free health care to their more than 33 million residents, I’m pretty sure the government here can find some way to make life a little easier on the 140,000 pensioners affected by this new plan. No?
