Cá bhfuil na spondulics ?

MDR

My source for this information was the CIA WorldFact Book

I simply took the government budget for each country and divided it by the population of the country.

Ireland
Population : 4 million people
Budget : 34 billion US dollars
Budget Per Captia : 8500

UK : 9416 *
Germany: 9638 *
France : 3500 (? don't understand this at all) *
Italy : 8400 *
Spain : 2625 *
Portugal : 4500 *
New Zealand : 4000
Norway : 17750 *

Now given the countries I have marked with a * can offer a there citizens a decent level of health care. I have to ask the question what are we doing with all the goddamn money ?

Please no corruption/conspiracy theories.

It seems to be me we have by European/World standards a very healthy budget ?

Raskolnikov

Originally posted by MDR

France : 3500 (? don't understand this at all) *

France still has some colonies, maybe that reduced the overall budget per capita

meglome

The fact that these are budget per capita figures explains most of it. Economies of scale would be my guess, some of these countries have big populations.

BTW a friend of mine was just in hospital in London for two weeks and the place was a total joke. Not far off complete incompetence, I had never seen the like of it in Ireland.

MDR

BTW a friend of mine was just in hospital in London for two weeks and the place was a total joke. Not far off complete incompetence, I had never seen the like of it in Ireland.

Have you ever visited the Mater Hospital Dublin, St James Hospital Dublin, ever been a public patient in Ireland ? My uncle while waiting for his hip to be replaced was housed in a room in the old Mater hospital, the cieling was falling in and they was a hole in the floor ...

Sligo has 6 mental health works servicing a poluation of 60,000
Blanchardstown has 0 serving a population of 200,000

There are 4 speach and language therapists servicing North Dublin
The same number services leitrim/longford.

Would you like me to go on ?

I have had bad expierences with the NHS (uk), I have had as many with the Irish Health Services, except in Ireland I pay for the privilage.

spongebob

Is a dangerous and expensive racket run for the benefit of and by the consultants and to a lesser extent the GP's

M

bertiebowl

Maybe it would be cheaper (and more importantly better for the patient) to send all our non emergency room type patients to other parts of the EU for treatment?

Has anyone done a cost - benefit analysis on this?

gandalf

I think the time has come to tackle the health service head on. Its obvious that money is been wasted hand over foot.

Why do we need so many separate health boards to service a population of 4 million people where one such authority would suffice. The money saved from amalgamating the admin and IT operations of the the health boards could be used to provide decent localised health care instead. Something like Cancer threatment centres that are within a hours drive for all Irish Citizens instead of sick people having to come to Dublin.

The other benefit of having a unitifed IT infrastructure would be the sharing of your patient information throughout the hospital system, therefore if I end up in hospital in Cork they could access my record from the time I've spent in hospitals in Dublin.

The main obstacle here is the fact that alot of admin people will lose jobs and therefore politicans look bad. However we have to ask overselves what do we want a decent health service that meets the peoples needs and is cost effective or safe jobs and a wasteful and inadequate health service.

I think its time to act decisively now, unfortunately the crowd we have in power have shown how pathetic they are at acting decisively.

Gandalf.

mike65

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2004.html

the above link gives GDP for capita, and France is at $25,400 and it has the best health service in the world.

Ireland income is $27,000 per head, and has a crap health service, but there is no mystery, France spends 10% of GDP on health, Ireland spends less than 7.

Mike.

l3rian

miko65 how can you say ireland has a crap health service, it may not be the best but at least it is free, you muppet

mike65

l3rian I trust you're not Kim Tae-Woo in disguise (you'll remember what happened to him) and the Irish Health service is in poor shape, and its not free either, not really. Almost everyone who can afford private insurance has it, and not without reason. But with an typical irony, the sheer number of private patients is now part of the problem as public beds are used by private patients.

Mike.

MrPudding

The French health service is very good but you pay for it. You can claim a portion of it back but you still pay.

Do you have a medical card l3rian? Healthcare in Ireland for me, and the majority of people I know, is certainly not free.

MDR

The French would easily have the best health service in the world. When I lived in Paris, I spent a fair bit of time hospital and nobody I met in there told me they were paying for anything ...

?

Perhaps I got it arseways, my french is certainily not up to scratch ...

MDR

I suppose my question is, where can I find a clear, conprehensive and easily digestable report of what we spend our money. I amn't shouting an screaming corruption or waste, I just want to know what we are spending money on ?