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Wishing you good health

Head Rambles Posted on by

Whatever else you do, don’t fall ill or have an accident in Ireland.

If you are misfortunate enough to require hospital treatment, you are fucked.  Mad Cow Harney has managed to reduce the health service here to a point where you would prefer treatment in Uganda or Libya.  In fact you would wish you were anywhere else other than Ireland.

Yesterday there were 569 people waiting for beds and having to make do with lying on trolleys in hospital corridors.  What the fuck are our billions being spent on in the health service?  Far from being reformed, the service still manages to hit new lows in performance.  At this rate it has to be the sickest health service in Europe.

Relying on the HSE is like playing Russian Roulette.  The only way to ensure proper treatment in a proper hospital is to go privately, and this of course means health insurance.  We are informed today that at the end of the month we are going to have to pay more.

Ireland has been in recession for two years now.  There has been a long period of deflation, with both prices and wages decreasing.  In theory, all salaries and prices should decrease at the same rate, so the overall effect is that no one is worse off.  So health insurance should decrease also?  Wrong.  It is increasing.  Bearing in mind that prices generally are going down, by how much do you thing the insurance is rising?  5%? Nah!  10%?  No way.  20%?  Hahaha!  Premiums are going up in my case by a staggering 45%!  How can anyone justify a price increase of 45% in the middle of a recession?  Fucking madness.

There are times when I feel that I am living through a nightmare.  Such crass incompetence, waste and crass mismanagement couldn’t possibly exist in the real world.

But it does.

 

Comments

Wishing you good health — 8 Comments

  1. Ahh, but Ireland isn’t the real world is it? It’s the land of faeries and little people and giants’ causways and kissing stones and pots of gold at the end of  rainbows. And Grandad!

  2. The reasons not to be a tourist in Ireland just keep piling up.  Thanks, GD. (not the least of these is the possibility of getting shot!)

  3. Miss Pat has just called the medic to have delivered a prozac (sp?) drip for me.  She says I am pacing around, arms flinging, and muttering something about faceook being crooks and robber bandits.  I think she is dialing 911.

  4. In that case the faeries and little people had better mind their health.  There is nothing worse than a sick leprechaun.

    Willie – Surely a little thing like a high chance of being killed wouldn’t be enough to put you off?  And just keep taking the Prozac.  You’ll be grand.

     

  5. Very sleepy..Think I’ll just take a nap.  Maybe the world will go away while I do.  Night!

  6. Grandad,

    You havn’t even mentioned the best bits for your overseas visitors. If you are referred to a consultant or specialist by your a GP in Ireland, there is a strong chance that the letter of referral will never be read. Thousands of similar unopened letters were found in a Dublin Hospital in 2010.

    In the same vein, thousands of ignored X-rays were found in another. The winter vomiting bug season is upon us, a time when the sick and frail will leave hospital in much a worse condition that when they entered it, and they will be the lucky ones. The MRSA bug can kill.

    And speaking of killing, at the annual conference of “Patient Focus” last year, delegates were told that it is estimated that 8,000 unsuspecting hospital residents last year, died as a result of medical negligence, (and another 160,000 were injured). I’m only guessing here, but I suppose having your wrongly amputated right arm sown back onto your arse would probably be classified by the caring profession as an injury, or might that be seen merely as creative surgery.

    And yes, the Irish are queueing up for all of this. The deeply ingrained guilt beaten into us by the Christian Brothers will take generations to fade.

  7. Thank you,  John Mallon-You have supported me in the decsion to save my hard earned pension money and not visit the dreamy isle you call “mother land”.  You and GD have done wonders for my shrinking bank funds.  I doubt seriously that Head Rambles will be winning any prizes given out by the Tourist Board this year.  My hat is off to you all who see and tell the truth.  And GD..I had a crappy day yesterday, foaming at the mouth about facebook.  

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