The real parliamentry left alternative SF seeks free health care access for all

national | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Friday February 17, 2006 14:46 by Paddy C

Private hospitals and private medical insurance would be abolished and replaced by a "free-to-all" health service under Sinn Féin health proposals published yesterday.

Under the plan all new general practitioners would become salaried employees of the State, while existing GPs would become State employees over time.

Proposing that the health service should be run on an all-Ireland basis, the party said emergency services should be made available to all citizens within a 45 minute journey of their home.

Once in power, Sinn Féin would lay out "a timetabled and fully resourced strategy to deliver the additional 3,000 hospital beds required", though the party has decided not to make any attempt at estimating the cost of its entire package.

The policy document, which has been worked on for months by a party group led by Cavan Monaghan TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, will be debated at the party's ardfheis in Dublin. "In an era of unprecedented wealth and healthcare spending, the continued inequalities in health and in access to healthcare care are an indictment of successive administrations, North and South," said the document, Healthcare in an Island of Equals.

Questioned about the cost of the package, Mr Ó Caoláin said it is impossible to put a figure on it, though citizens, he said, are already paying taxes, private health insurance and hospital fees, while they are also paying for tax-breaks granted to the rich to build private hospitals.

Acknowledging that "a world-class, all-Ireland universal public healthcare system" will cost extra, he said: "If that means that we have to look at increasing taxation in any given area then this party is up for that because we believe that citizens are prepared to pay for a quality health service."

One of the "core" aims of Sinn Féin will be to enshrine a legally enforceable right to proper healthcare in the Constitution.