Denmark is popular with strategists at the Department of Health and Children. Like the Republic, Denmark funds health care from general taxation. This contrasts with other European states, such as Germany, which fund health care from social or compulsory health insurance. So Denmark is a useful example for the Department and the Government in their arguments against Opposition proposals for compulsory health insurance.
Denmark shares other characteristics with the Republic: a serious shortage of nurses, chiefly due to low pay and poor working conditions; and life expectancy that has not kept pace with the increase in the European average.
In important respects, though, Denmark is very different. It spends more on health care than does the Republic (see graph). It has a deep-seated culture of egalitarianism and support for state solutions to social needs. Despite a small private health-care sector - it is very small by Irish standards - Denmark has achieved equitable access to health care. Even the Danish Medical Association, which represents doctors, opposes the growth of private medicine.
A 1997 Eurobarometer survey found that 90 per cent of Danes were satisfied with their health care, the greatest proportion of any European state.
Denmark is a constitutional monarchy with a population spread over 80 islands and most of the peninsula of Jutland. In its decentralised system of government, the counties deliver health care, which accounts for 70 per cent of their spending, the money for which comes from state, county and municipal taxes. The counties own and run hospitals and pay doctors and other health professionals.
Decentralisation can mean uneven care, which central government is attempting to ameliorate by waiting-time guarantees and a free choice of hospitals.
Most health care is free. There are some payments for drugs, vitamins, dentristry (free to the age of 18) and other therapies. A small voluntary health-insurance scheme, dominated by a large non-profit company, covers these.
While private hospitals provide only 1 per cent of beds, voluntary insurance is beginning to cover private-hospital treatment for those who want to avoid public waiting lists. Here, Denmark has the embryonic possibility of developing a two-tier system, like the Republic. There are, however, no private beds in public hospitals. And doctors and politicians are extremely averse to allowing a two-tier system to develop.
Sixty per cent of doctors are hospital employees, with salaries that range from 250,000 Danish kroner (£26,485) for the most junior doctor to 600,000 Danish kroner (£63,565) for a top consultant. Salaries for consultants at public hospitals in the Republic start at £87,000 and, with private practice, frequently exceed £200,000, sometimes greatly. A Danish consultant earns the same as the head of policy planning at the ministry of health, close to the £62,000 earned by the equivalent public servant in the Republic.
Counties pay general practitioners incomes comparable to those of consultants, in a combination of capitation and service fees, but from this they must meet their practice costs.
Specialists were formerly allowed three hours' private practice a week in public hospitals if they paid for the facilities. They may now engage in private practice only outside public hospitals, with the costs paid by insurers or patients.
There are no restrictions on this private work, which is undertaken in doctors' spare time, because "only a very small number of specialists choose to engage in such activity", according to one study. The potential for a system like the Republic's, in which this is the norm rather than the exception, nonetheless exists.
Hospitals are frequently managed by professional administrators, such as economists or lawyers, and clinicians complain about the erosion of their influence. A shortage of doctors is being addressed by increased medical-school places.
Denmark's disappointing life expectancy has provoked a national programme to reduce health inequality and improve public health. GPs are now paid for preventive consultations, in which they discuss patients' diets and lifestyles.