The health system continues to be \u201ca cause for scandal\u201d, with the \u201cspectacle of vulnerable and sick people waiting on hospital trolleys and plastic chairs sadly [still] commonplace\u201d, an Oireachtas committee has been told.<\/p>\n
The Health Committee also heard many of the Sl\u00e1intecare<\/a> reforms have \u201cfaltered\u201d, with the problems in health \u201cinextricable from a political context in which healthcare in this country is not regarded as a basic right of all people\u201d.<\/p>\n There were calls for legislation to make universal healthcare an entitlement rather than a policy aim. <\/p>\n Dr Domhnall McGlacken-Byrne, one of the co-founders of Doctors for Universal Healthcare, appeared before the committee. He said a system that gives everyone access to care when they need it, no matter who they are, was \u201cpremised on a conception of healthcare not as an economic good or an item of charity, but a human right of all people\u201d.<\/p>\n He said Ireland did not have such a system, either in policy or in practice.<\/p>\n \u201cIn our hospitals, the scale of our waiting lists remains extraordinary,\u201d said McGlacken-Byrne. \u201cEarlier this year, the number of people awaiting specialist hospital care surpassed one million, a remarkable figure for a country of our size. In our emergency departments, the spectacle of vulnerable and sick people waiting on hospital trolleys and plastic chairs sadly remains commonplace. Our public and private hospital systems continue to overlap in a way that is complicated, inefficient and unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n