Public forum on the health crisis

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | event notice Thursday April 06, 2006 15:15 by people before profit - people before profit alliance/Davitt League

all welcome

Public forum: Your health: Whose business? Is there a solution to the crisis in the health service?

The People Before Profit Alliance / Davitt League is hosting a forum on the crisis in the health service at 7.30 pm on Friday 7 April in the Irish Film Institute, Eustace Street, Dublin 2.

Public forum: Your health: Whose business? Is there a solution to the crisis in the health service?

The People Before Profit Alliance / Davitt League is hosting a forum on the crisis in the health service at 7.30 pm on Friday 7 April in the Irish Film Institute, Eustace Street, Dublin 2.

Speakers include
Dave Hughes, Deputy General Secretary, Irish Nurses' Organisation,
Dr Peadar O'Grady, author of Why the Irish health service is in crisis.

This health meeting is one in a series of People before Profit Alliance/Davitt League-organised fora on critical issues for Irish society that have already discussed housing, natural gas and oil resources, waste disposal and incineration, women in 21st century Ireland and People Before ProfitAlliance / Davitt League's approach to electoral politics. The Alliance brings together campaigning groups and individuals, to promote a different politics for the 21st century, one that empowers people in
their workplaces, their communities and on the streets. It is inspired
by the resistance of the Rossport 5 and the Irish Ferries' marchers to
increasingly undemocratic and unaccountable institutions.

On the health crisis:
Dr Peadar O Grady said, “After nine years of Fianna Fail and the PDs in office the current chaos in our hospitals is a national scandal. Brendan Gleeson slamming the health service on the Late Late Show was applauded by the vast majority of people who are tired of seeing sick relatives on trolleys and listening to Mary Harney's excuses.

The government's policy since 2001, 'The Health Strategy', is to put back 3000 public hospital beds, but Harney wants these to be private beds in for-profit hospitals which are mushrooming. American multinational Triad will run the new Beacon Clinic in Sandyford in Dublin.

Mary Harney argues that for-profit beds are cheaper and more effective. This is a lie.

Firstly for-profit hospitals will be given massive state handouts of billions in tax breaks and public land and will not give full services, only cherry picking straight-forward elective surgical cases.

Secondly, in the USA, more than $1 in every $3 in for-profit hospitals goes on beaureaucracy or profits. As a result the USA has the worst value for money in the world with the health status of American citizens ranked in the thirties while health spending ranks number one!

Why would mary harney lie? Why refuse to fund public beds and solve the trolley crisis? This is because profit comes first, not health, in the economic model Harney follows, called 'neoliberalism'. Private instead of public, means more profit. Insurance instead of tax, means more profits. Fees rather than salaries means more profit. Both mean more beaureaucracy too.

Immediate funding for better health centres and more hospital and nursing home beds and staff would solve the crisis within months. As long as neoliberals like Harney or Ahern are in charge of the health service, profit will be put before people.

It will take mass demonstrations of young and old, patients and health workers, like those seen recently in France, to turn around these policies and kick the profiteers out of the health service once and for all.”

The People Before Profit Alliance/Davitt League believes that specific campaigners have a common general enemy, in the 'neo-liberal
agenda' of business interests, bureaucrats and mainstream politicians.
These enthusiastically endorse or fatalistically accept the virtually
unrestricted pursuit of profit and the 'market-place' in Irish society.
Parties of the conventional 'left' - Labour, the Greens and Sinn Féin -
reject substantially higher taxation of corporations and wealthy
individuals, and offer themselves for coalition with parties funded by
business interests (FF, FG and the PDs). They have all accepted,
explicitly or tacitly, Margaret Thatcher's notorious mantra, 'there is
no alternative'. People Before Profit Alliance / Davitt League offers
an alternative, giving precedence to human and community need over
private greed. It is determined to develop a well-researched,
thoughtful, coherent and radical challenge to the prevailing consensus.

Contact:
Catherine@086 0679708; Rory@086 1523542; Peadar O Grady: 0879879489
www.people-before-profit.org.