Sir, - Kevin Myers is excessively anguished by the motion for a comprehensive GP service which I proposed at the recent annual general meeting of the Irish Medical Organisation (An Irishman's Diary, April 17th).
I believe we should have a comprehensive national GP service covering every man, woman and child in the country, free at point of access and without means test.
This concept causes Mr Myers a degree of distress. He says GPs would be besieged by the neurotic and by the lonely. Could I perhaps set his mind at ease? Already 1.2 million people are covered by the medical card, allowing them free access to their GPs.
Among that number there are lonely people, and also a number of what Mr Myers would call neurotic people. This has not troubled the GPs. I have never heard them complain in these regards. Why should he be anxious?
Does Mr Myers believe, perhaps, that a good GP service should concern itself, not with the lonely and the neurotic, but rather with the gregarious, the vivacious and the psychologically robust? That would certainly be an idiosyncratic social vision.
Mr Myers, with some solemnity, states that anything free will sooner or later be abused. But so, it has to be asked, what? The library service is free. The fire brigade service is free. The casualty departments are free. The ambulance service is free. And they are each, from time to time, abused. Perhaps in the broad scope of his social vision Mr Myers would have them all closed down? That would serve to stamp out abuse.
The Government has now introduced a free, comprehensive GP scheme for some of the wealthiest people in the community - accountants, lawyers, cardiologists, captains and vice-captains of industry. The only criterion for eligibility is that they should have celebrated their 70th birthdays in, one hopes, appropriate style.
This measure has very effectively laid down the principle of a vigorous egalitarianism in Irish general practice. It treats the very rich and the very poor alike. The only drawback is that there are so many other deserving, perhaps more deserving, people who are too young to be sick with financial tranquility. They are neither poor enough nor mature enough for the medical card.
Mr Myers's views represent that dreary but almost necessary cliché of resistance which is invariably perched at the threshold of every social advance. He should, on the contrary, look forward to the day when newspaper columnists will sit in the doctor's waiting-room beside the lonely, waiting to see the doctor on equal terms. In such circumstances, the lonely may enjoy the faint hope of an improving conversation. And the columnists will just have to get used to it. - Yours, etc.,
Dr CYRIL DALY, Howth Road, Dublin 5.