Over 70s Medical Cards Means Test - Age Action Lines Busy - Cowen Announces U-turn

eoinmn wrote:

Generally, I don't like these "lets take money out of the tea budget and put it into the cancer budget" ideas. It tends to go with "won't someone think of the children" slogans.

But as Audi says, What the hell is a 70m fund for horses and greyhounds being spent on? It sounds like Celtic Tiger madness.
Surely these enterprises can stand on their own two (four?) feet?

Did you look at the picture eoinmn? Have you seen the one in Cork? Its like Ceaucescu's palace. I think it cost 15 million euro plus. These things are only used a few hours a week max. The NDP needs to be radically pruned and the ridiculous overspending on trophy buildings stopped right away.

What is wrong with thinking about the children and the old ? I think most people in this country have clear priorities to protect the most vulnerable. The wealthy should have been taxed with a large one-off levy before they had time to shift everything offshore. Cuts should be made to protect people's well being as much as possible. People on incomes below the tax bracket should not be levied. If you don't "think about the children", what priorities are you going to set?

cactus flower wrote:

Did you look at the picture eoinmn?

I did.
It left me speechless.

I've no problem with reasonable subsidies for top class greyhound facilities in Cork, Galway, Dublin etc.
I've been to Shelbourne Park and Galway a few times and enjoyed it immensely.

But Lifford??

Again, I believe in developing small towns, but there is a point where these things have to stand on their own feet.

cactus flower wrote:

What is wrong with thinking about the children and the old ?

Nothing But I'd ordinarily prefer to see calls to trim the entire Sport & Tourism budget by 10% rather than picking out specific projects.

But in this case, Gogarty has a point.

Do we know was this €70m to be spent over 1 year or 5 years?

Two points:

The greyhound and horse industries generate jobs and taxes. They also help support the social fabric of the country - an important goal in the face of the bowling alone phenomenom.

Justine McCarty says that Lenihan's actions will cause "unavoidable deaths". You can't cause something that is unavoidable!

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

Two points:

The greyhound and horse industries generate jobs and taxes. They also help support the social fabric of the country - an important goal in the face of the bowling alone phenomenom.

Justine McCarty says that Lenihan's actions will cause "unavoidable deaths". You can't cause something that is unavoidable!

Yeh I noticed that. Think it's a typo. She uses avoidable further down.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

They also help support the social fabric of the country - an important goal in the face of the bowling alone phenomenom.

Of course you're right, but one wonders how much the greyhound stadia depend on public money.

eoinmn wrote:

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

They also help support the social fabric of the country - an important goal in the face of the bowling alone phenomenom.

Of course you're right, but one wonders how much the greyhound stadia depend on public money.

Our greyhound stadium has a perfectly good tin roofed stand self-funded. This stuff was all absolute nonsense, Zhou.

There seem to be two standards in operation - one the decrepit portacabin and the other a glittering people's palace built to a cost and specification beyond all reason, for a price out of touch with any normal reality. Have you seen the local authority headquarters built in the last few years?

Does no-one understand how to manage money and get reasonable value for it?

The NDP must be full of this nonsense and a complete review is overdue.

Did you see this on p.ie ? Paul Gogarty has just said on radio (what radio ?) that the Greens were told by FF that only the "very rich" would be cut out of the medical card scheme. http://www.politics.ie/green-party/36348-greens-were-misled-ff-paul-gogarty.html

The plot sickens.

What's the deal with the competition authority ? Seems there is a problem negotiating pricing with GP's due to a high court ruling last year. Any know anything ?

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

What's the deal with the competition authority ? Seems there is a problem negotiating pricing with GP's due to a high court ruling last year. Any know anything ?

Brian Lenihan was on RTE radio at the weekend and said Government knew it was against the law, but that they were going to ignore the law and do it anyway. I had thought of starting a thread on it.

cactus flower wrote:

Brian Lenihan was on RTE radio at the weekend and said Government knew it was against the law, but that they were going to ignore the law and do it anyway. I had thought of starting a thread on it.

Might as well.
Legally the Competition Authority is correct.
But in practical terms it seems ridiculous that the government can't negotiate with doctors as a bloc.

eoinmn wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Brian Lenihan was on RTE radio at the weekend and said Government knew it was against the law, but that they were going to ignore the law and do it anyway. I had thought of starting a thread on it.

Might as well.
Legally the Competition Authority is correct.
But in practical terms it seems ridiculous that the government can't negotiate with doctors as a bloc.

The law and the Dail/Parliament are very important constraints on Government in between elections, without which a country could slip into dictatorship.

Does this Government have sufficient respect for either?

eoinmn wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Brian Lenihan was on RTE radio at the weekend and said Government knew it was against the law, but that they were going to ignore the law and do it anyway. I had thought of starting a thread on it.

Might as well.
Legally the Competition Authority is correct.
But in practical terms it seems ridiculous that the government can't negotiate with doctors as a bloc.

While that may be correct, surely the Gov cannot ignore a high court ruling ??

I'm not suggesting that the CA or High Court be ignored!
The law stands and should be respected.

I'm just making an observation.
Surely you would admit it is awkward and impractical that the government can't negotiate with GPs as a bloc?

eoinmn wrote:

I'm not suggesting that the CA or High Court be ignored!
The law stands and should be respected.

I'm just making an observation.
Surely you would admit it is awkward and impractical that the government can't negotiate with GPs as a bloc?

I certainly do admit to that. I don't understand how this came to be in the first place. Don't the Gov negotiate with all sorts of parties all the time ? What did the CA find so wrong with negotiating with GP's that it caused a visit to the courts ?

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

What did the CA find so wrong with negotiating with GP's that it caused a visit to the courts ?

The government negotiated with Dr. James Reilly (wearing his IMO hat) that GPs get €460 per annum per over 70 medical card patient they have.

The CA says this is price fixing.

eoinmn wrote:

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

What did the CA find so wrong with negotiating with GP's that it caused a visit to the courts ?

The government negotiated with Dr. James Reilly (wearing his IMO hat) that GPs get €460 per annum per over 70 medical card patient they have.

The CA says this is price fixing.

Does that not mean that the agreement should be set aside?

The agreement is obviously flawed in more than one way. The payments for the under 70s Medical Card is too low and the over 70s too high. There is a huge incentive for practices to locate in a well todo area with a lot of elderly people and to move out of low income, younger areas like Ballymun and Tallaght. These areas barely have any medical services at all.

If the government employed doctors to run primary health clinics in these areas, the competition law would not be an issue.

cactus flower wrote:

The payments for the under 70s Medical Card is too low and the over 70s too high.

FF say the opposite.

eoinmn wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

The payments for the under 70s Medical Card is too low and the over 70s too high.

FF say the opposite.

I'm sure they are saying that the over 70s payment is too high and that the savings should all be made by the doctors taking a cut.

cactus flower wrote:

eoinmn wrote:

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

They also help support the social fabric of the country - an important goal in the face of the bowling alone phenomenom.

Of course you're right, but one wonders how much the greyhound stadia depend on public money.

Our greyhound stadium has a perfectly good tin roofed stand self-funded. This stuff was all absolute nonsense, Zhou.

There seem to be two standards in operation - one the decrepit portacabin and the other a glittering people's palace built to a cost and specification beyond all reason, for a price out of touch with any normal reality. Have you seen the local authority headquarters built in the last few years?

Does no-one understand how to manage money and get reasonable value for it?

The NDP must be full of this nonsense and a complete review is overdue.

In fairness, attendances at greyhound racing were down to very little a few years ago. The stadia were not somewhere you would bring a girlfriend, or even your granny. The places were decrepit sheds that made league of ireland grounds look plush. All the bars had lino tiles with bits missing. the only food you could get was chips cooked in stale grease that hadn't been changed for a year.

Attendances have gone way up with the investment in infrastructure. Many people now get useful employement out of it. It is a particularly useful source of additional income to people who breed and rear greyhounds. These are not wealthy people. It also provides income to the people who work at the track and to trainers and it is a good night out which ends at a reasonable cost which ends at a reasonable time and where people can now attend as a family. There are a lot of husbands and wives and fathers and sons who attend the racing together.

Also, a lot of the land belonging to the greyhoud tracks were sold off during the boom to help fund redevelopment of the facilities. It wasn't all government money. The fact that we have good quality stadia is a good thing not a bad thing. The rest of the country can't be judged by the Dept of Health's failures. Does anybody really believe the HSE wouldn't have just squandered the money? Should it be given to GPs in Foxrock who might get €65,000 for having a hundred 70+ year olds on their books (not necessarily in their surgery)?

IMHO - the real reason for this Green Party proposal is their prejudice that greyhounds are ugly vicious looking animals and the people who follow them are blood thirsty knackers who like nothing better than to see animals tortured and dying. They believe that these people would be better off sitting in front of a TV watching National Geographinc than out with their families meeting other people from around the country discussing matters of state, society and greyhound lineage. This Green Party prejudice is the main reason why I am not a member of that party with whom I agree on most issues. That they think they can read my mind and judge me makes my blood boil.

Zhou - I won't quote your post not to stretch the thread, but I've read it carefully. I go to greyhound races and am not a Green Party member. I have been banging on about this crazy overexpenditure on stadia for years. They could have been done for a third of the price, extremely well.

Of course the HSE would have wasted it too, they are the definition of waste. They have built themselves a decentralised office with a COPPER ROOF.
Perhaps we should strip and sell the scrap off to save a few peoples' lives.

I'm surprised to see all those straw dogs in your post, this is not like you. I have just posted already about the nonsensical way the medical card scheme has been run. All of this is part of the same problem of irresponsible waste and inefficiency.

After all the nonsense we are now virtually bankrupt as a country. Surely we need to stop this lunacy. Some social responsibility is called for.

What's wrong with copper roofs (rooves?)? We have loads of them at Maynooth and we've been around for two hundred odd years.

Has anyone actually said how they're going to about this means testing? It might be quite a fair system. Of course, the worry it's caused is terrible, but perhaps unavoidable.

Zhou, that's unfair to say Green Party members are snobs about greyhound racing.
I love going to the dogs. I go a couple of times every year.

Of course a few are vegans who think greyhound racing is cruel, but I imagine they are a extremely small number of people.

cactus flower wrote:

Zhou - I won't quote your post not to stretch the thread, but I've read it carefully. I go to greyhound races and am not a Green Party member. I have been banging on about this crazy overexpenditure on stadia for years. They could have been done for a third of the price, extremely well.

I believe that the Green Party has a prejudice against the greyhound industry. I did not mean to impute that prejudice to you. Apologies if it read that way.

cactus flower wrote:

Of course the HSE would have wasted it too, they are the definition of waste. They have built themselves a decentralised office with a COPPER ROOF.
Perhaps we should strip and sell the scrap off to save a few peoples' lives.

Why can't you have a copper roof? Is there a health risk?

cactus flower wrote:

I'm surprised to see all those straw dogs in your post, this is not like you. I have just posted already about the nonsensical way the medical card scheme has been run. All of this is part of the same problem of irresponsible waste and inefficiency.

Nice one . I am not as au fait as you with waste in the development of greyhound stadia. Certainly if you say there has been waste then I would be inclined to believe you. I totally agreee that waste must be cut out. I don't think that Bord na gCon is the equivalent of the Health Service. Certainly it turned into a very dynamic organisation under the aggressive management of Paschal Taggart. The same could not be said of the HSE. In fairness to the HSE, they are just not comparable.

However, the tenor of the Green Party TDs statement and of the photo posted above was that millions are spent on the greyhound industry and that is wrong per se. I think that is incorrect and deliberately emotive. If somebody says, "look at the money wasted" then you can't argue if it has actually been wasted such as in relation to Noel dempsey's evoting machines. However, if somebody puts up a picture of a greyhound stadium, a figure which even a QS couldn't judge based on a photo, and a picture of a portakabin A&E unit then I think that is the same logic. With all that said, I know you always try to be fair and I have not read your previous posts about how money was wasted on greyhound stadia.

cactus flower wrote:

After all the nonsense we are now virtually bankrupt as a country. Surely we need to stop this lunacy. Some social responsibility is called for.

I agree. The greyhound industry will have to take some pain the same as the rest of the country. They are lucky that they have bricks and mortar which they built in the boom times.

eoinmn wrote:

Zhou, that's unfair to say Green Party members are snobs about greyhound racing.
I love going to the dogs. I go a couple of times every year.

Of course a few are vegans who think greyhound racing is cruel, but I imagine they are a extremely small number of people.

Well that is the impression I have always got from the Green Party over the years. This latest suggestion that greyhounds are to blame for the medical card problems kinda confirms it for me. I am sure their are individual members who feel differently. Perhaps you could talk to some other party members and let me know if I have misunderstood the party's attitude to the doggie folk.