Being told you have cancer is a significant life-event. Even when the prognosis turns out to be good, people describe a numbed response. Although great strides have been made in treating certain cancers, it remains one of the main causes of death for people living in this State. Unsurprisingly, the diagnosis remains a shocking one for most, and is accompanied by worry not just about survivability, but also by concerns about future income, the ability to pay off a mortgage and the cost of treatment.
Until now, it has long been accepted practice to provide a discretionary medical card to people diagnosed with cancer who requested free medical care. Minister for Health James Reilly reportedly told the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children that applications and renewals for these cards now face new scrutiny and national eligibility criteria are being applied for the first time. Laverne McGuinness, chief operations officer of the Health Service Executive, explained that a discretionary card can now automatically be given to someone with cancer only if the illness is "life-limiting". Last week in the Dáil, Taoiseach Enda Kenny denied that this was the case.
Worryingly, the original Department of Health decision would mean a patient's cancer must have entered the terminal phase before the State would provide the support most people require in order to remove financial and other social factors as a source of worry when facing a cancer diagnosis. "If someone is self-employed, young, without private health insurance, not eligible for a medical card or doesn't have savings, the person [with a cancer diagnosis] is left in a very vulnerable position of being unable to manage basic expenses such as heating and travel to hospital for treatment", the Irish Cancer Society said.
For a Minister for Health to even consider inflicting additional hardship on cancer patients, however cash-strapped the health service, is disturbing and the Government should move quickly to ease patients’ anxiety.