FREE GP care for everyone in the State, regardless of income, would be introduced by the Labour Party within its first four years in government, the party has promised.
In a health manifesto published yesterday, it says free primary care for all will cost €389 million. It will be funded from savings made elsewhere, including €75 million which will be found from cutting pay to hospital consultants as well as €100 million from slashing the State’s drugs bill.
The party also plans to transform rather than dismantle the HSE, reduce staff numbers in the organisation by 7,000 through voluntary redundancies, restore responsibility for the health budget to the minister for health rather than the HSE, and devolve responsibility for running HSE hospitals to local trusts.
In addition, it will introduce a system of universal health insurance cover within six years. Everyone, according to the proposed changes published by Labour, will be insured for hospital care by either a private or public insurer.
The National Treatment Purchase Fund and the purchasing arm of the HSE will come together to form a new public insurer.
The State would pay premiums for lower income households, there would be subsidised premiums for middle-income groups and the premiums paid by those in higher-income groups would be similar to what they already pay for private health insurance. Insurance will be compulsory, but there will be a choice of insurer.
Labour’s health spokeswoman Jan O’Sullivan said the healthcare system had to be fixed. She said free GP care had been provided for all in other countries, so it could also be done here. This would incentivise people to seek treatment in the primary care sector where it is cheaper.
She added that the healthcare plan was costed and timetabled. It estimates the cost of providing universal insurance for hospital care will be an extra €371 million a year or an extra 5 per cent will go on hospital spending, but this would be higher if hospitals were not running at 100 per cent efficiency levels.
“The additional 5 per cent cost of universal hospital care insurance will potentially arise in the sixth year . . . in six years’ time economic recovery will mean that more people are in work, on higher incomes and able to contribute to the system, so that if there is a 5 per cent or lower additional cost, this will be funded without any additional cost to the people who are currently contributing to the system,” it says.
It adds that in government it “will increase numbers of hospital consultants but control their remuneration rates within the universal hospital insurance system”.
Under the new system “consultants will be leaders in their hospitals and hospital networks with the opportunities to become clinical directors or chief executives . . . according to the excellence of their contributions to care”.
There is a pledge to increase the number of GPs and nurses in primary care to cope with increased visits, and a promise to scrap prescription charges for medical card holders. The €25 million this would cost can be found from savings elsewhere, it says.
Labour will also invest in a new national children’s hospital – but it will first review the suitability of Dublin’s Mater hospital as a site – a new hospital for the northeast, and will relocate maternity hospitals to acute hospital campuses in Dublin and Limerick.