At around about the time yesterday morning that Seamus Coffey (pictured above with the Taoiseach) was going on RTE’s “Morning Ireland” to lambast the Government’s budgetary practices on behalf of the Fiscal Advisory Council (which he chairs) – somebody I know was seeking hospital care in Dublin for an elderly family member with a bad bacterial infection.
The situation in Dublin yesterday if you wanted a hospital bed was simple: There were none. Not in the private hospitals, and not in the public ones. The system is stretched to literal breaking point, whereby patients such as the one I mention above were literally being told to go to other hospitals “but there are no guarantees”. These are people who pay their taxes in full and choose in addition to spend money on health insurance because they know that the tax they pay certainly doesn’t guarantee them dignity or speed when they need public services.
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