Madam, – President Barack Obama has characterised the American health care system as one in which vast amounts of money are being spent on things that aren’t making Americans people any healthier, concluding, “It is a model that has taken the pursuit of medicine from a profession – a calling – to a business” (World News, June 16th).
This bankrupt model is the one that Mary Harney has been trying to foist on us since she took over as Minister for Health. As Fintan O’Toole pointed out in the same edition, the Minister’s ideological crusade has very definite outcomes – the provision of more tax-shelters for the wealthy and the continued subsidisation of the operations of the Catholic Church in this country.
While both Mr O’Toole and Vincent Browne have been highlighting the dysfunctional relationship that exists in this Republic between State, church, and our “entrepreneurial” elites, and pointing to the urgent need for a debate on the type of society we want in this country – ie, one based on social justice, or one based on privilege – none of the main political parties have responded in any meaningful way to this need.
The only inference that can been drawn from this is that the three main parties remain committed to promoting privilege in education, health, and the workplace.
Surely, it is time that someone called a halt to the perennial defrauding of the citizenry of this country by successive governments whose only agenda is furtherance of the narrow interests of their financial backers. – Yours, etc,