The belief that private healthcare is superior to public healthcare is a myth, a group of senior doctors has said.
In a position paper to be published next month, which has been seen by The Irish Times, the Doctors Alliance for Better Public Healthcare says "for-profit" healthcare drives up costs and may contribute to a worsening of the general health status of the population.
Using an international comparison of healthcare systems, the paper compares amounts spent on private medicine with life expectancy and infant mortality.
In the US, private medicine expenditure is 8 per cent of GDP with a life expectancy of 77 years, whereas in Sweden and Japan, with a private spend of 1.4 per cent of GDP, people live on average to 80 and 81.5 years.
Both countries also have the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, while the US ranks 18th in a performance table of infant mortality.
"Private medicine has limited ability to provide intensive care and may not be in a position to cope with complications arising from the treatment it has provided," the group says, noting that the private sector does not provide integrated rehabilitation for patients who have suffered a major illness.
"The public versus private debate is driven by an ideological principle that private is always better," one of the authors said. "Current Government policy is ideologically driven on the basis that private healthcare is superior. However, we have major concerns about the level of care the private sector offers patients as well as its cost effectiveness."
The alliance claims to represent a majority of GPs and consultants working in the health service. Its members include Dr Éamonn Shanahan, chairman of the Irish College of General Practitioners, and Dr Orla Hardiman, director of neurology at Beaumont Hospital.
The position paper, Myth-busting in Irish Healthcare, also disputes claims that sufficient funds are being spent on the health service. "According to OECD figures, up to 20 per cent of our health budget is spent instead on items which are paid for from the social care budget in other countries," it says.
Referring to figures that suggest we have more nurses per capita than anywhere else in Europe, the doctors say that because nurses here undertake work performed by care attendants in other countries, the true number of nurses performing nursing duties is much lower.
On the issue of A&E services, the alliance says the crisis is caused by bad work practices.
"Hospitals regularly refuse to accept critically ill patients from other referring hospitals even though the patients can only be treated in a specialist unit. Even though these are very ill patients who have been prioritised between consultants, they are refused admission because other patients are on trolleys in A&E."
According to the position paper, some of the main factors leading to overcrowding in A&E are insufficient bed capacity; inadequate facilities for the long-term chronically ill; the inability of general practitioners to directly access essential diagnostic services, and poor integration of hospital and general practitioner services.
HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children last week there had been a significant reduction in A&E waiting times as a result of the HSE's winter initiative.