Sir, - Maev-Ann Wren's series of articles spelled out clearly how the health service is under-funded and is used by medical consultants as a milch cow to provide some fatty cream for themselves.
The defensive response in your letters page shows how sensitive, insecure and uncomfortable the consultants themselves are with the existing system. As a group, however, they have repeatedly shown themselves unwilling to change.
I passed round the article about consultants' earnings to my fellow workers, the attendants and auxiliary workers at St Finbarr's Hospital in Cork. The nicer word I would use for their reaction was "incredulity".
As foot-soldiers of the Health Service, who attend constantly to the physical needs of patients, many of their victims of stroke, paralysis and general disablement, we are required to be present from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m., weekends included, on a typical day. We must clock on and clock off.
Surprisingly, we are not allowed to do any private work (as if there were time!) nor are we allowed to charge patients privately for the service we deliver. Our weekly pay is £241.79, rising by annual increments to a maximum of £255.17. My own mortgage repayments to First Active Building Society have been increased three times in the past 12 months, but my union, SIPTU, informs me we must stay within the National Pay Agreement.
Consultants, who are paid for a 33-hour week (ours is 39-hour) receive average incomes of £150,000 a year, £66,000 from their State salaries alone. This means that consultants, who get their skills and training at the taxpayers' expense, get at least 10 times our incomes. We can, of course, accept extra payment for skills, training and experience but that differential is obscene.
My prescription:
All health care and treatment to be provided free at source. This would eliminate at a stroke the squalor, privilege, elitism and money-grubbing of private medicine. "Need, not greed" should be the guiding principle. Sorry about BUPA and the VHI, to which I, like most working-class people, have never been able to afford to subscribe.
Consultants to be required to clock on and clock off just like us ordinary mortals.
Greater emphasis to be placed on preventive medicine, teaching people about the health risks of alcohol, coffee, cholesterol and the dangers of lack of exercise.
To overcome staff shortages, the right to work to be granted to all asylum-seekers. That would have the double effect of reducing racism.
Patients to have a greater say in their own treatment. The Patients' Charter should be implemented. - Yours, etc.,
Jim Blake, Grosvenor Mews, Douglas West, Cork.