{"id":108291,"date":"2025-10-08T07:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T07:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/108291\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T07:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T07:35:10","slug":"a-budget-with-barely-a-mention-of-universal-healthcare-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/108291\/","title":{"rendered":"A budget with barely a mention of universal healthcare \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Sir, \u2013 Another <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/budget\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/budget\">budget<\/a> comes and goes with scarcely a mention of universal healthcare, one of the great unresolved policy issues in Irish democracy. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">If my sums are right, 2026 will be the 10th year since publication of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/slaintecare\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/slaintecare\/\">Sl\u00e1intecare<\/a> report, which was envisioned to be a 10-year transformative roadmap to achieve universal healthcare in Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A universal healthcare system is one in which everybody is guaranteed access to the care they require without regard to their ability to pay. It is premised on a conception of healthcare as a human right. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">It arose in most western societies from the wreckage of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/second-world-war\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/second-world-war\/\">second World War<\/a>, but never here.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Specifically, more than half our population pays, in full and out of pocket, to see a GP. There is no other country in Europe where that happens. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Waiting lists for surgeries, scans, disability assessments remain scandalously long. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">This should never be seen as normal. Meanwhile, our public health system and private medical sector continue to overlap in a way that is inefficient, unfair and outdated.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Nine years ago, we confidently assured ourselves that all this would be sorted within the decade. Some progress was achieved \u2013 such as the new consultant contract \u2013 but key deliverables were not. The architecture of the system remains largely unchanged.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">History tells us that universal healthcare only happens when certain key ingredients are present. One of these is a broad-based civic coalition made up of people who declare health to be a right of all.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">We lack this. Then and only then will the politicians follow. \u2013 Yours, etc, <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">DR DOMHNALL McGLACKEN-BYRNE,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Chair, Doctors For Universal Healthcare,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Dublin. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir, \u2013 Another budget comes and goes with scarcely a mention of universal healthcare, one of the great&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[275],"tags":[10471,18,135,475,474,19,17,67605,30114,34226],"class_list":{"0":"post-108291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-health-care","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-letter-of-the-day","16":"tag-second-world-war","17":"tag-slaintecare"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}