Thursday, Sep 2nd 2010
Abuse of Women in Conflict Zones
It is only in the last couple of decades that the world has focused on the horrific levels of violence perpetrated against women in times of war. Although women and girls have been the victims of sexual violence and other forms of aggression dating back several millennia, their plight has [...]
On Monday night The Frontline, RTE’s flagship current affairs show, broadcast a special programme on the state and direction of our health service.
Advertised for a week in advance, the programme promised to tell us if our health system is on the right track or going backwards?
A larger than usual studio audience was given an hour [...]
Mary Harney has returned from New Zealand where she evidently gave some thought to coming up with another of her straw-man arguments for facing down criticism of her management of the health service. In relation to the enormous backlog of X-rays requiring diagnosis at Tallaght Hospital, the Minister says that she cannot be responsible for [...]
My early years are replete with memories of the wisdom contained within the Irish seanfhocal. My mother, a fluent Irish speaker, enjoyed nothing more than a good natter as Gaeilge with a seanfhocal at her fingertips for every eventuality. A particular favourite, whenever a cold or any other ailment made its appearance, was ‘Is fearr [...]
The latest Socialist Register, which was published in October 2009, is called Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitialism. As one of the editors, Colin Leys says, the aim was to show that health is a subject that currently isn’t but needs to be considered as part of Political Economy and should be something that is an [...]
C&AG: hospitals owed €167m by private insurers
It says the low rate of income recovery from patients who were treated privately in the 24 hospitals reviewed “would suggest that the State is facilitating private medicine without getting the related income for the service it provides”.
Some 50 per cent of private in-patients are not charged for their [...]
The Real News | Health care or disease care?
Paul Jay in conversation with Len Saputo and Byron Belitsos, authors of A Return to Healing: Radical Health Care Reform and the Future of Medicine about the virtues of the single payer option in the running of the US health care system. They also point out that [...]
This week, indignant old men and women have led a wave of unprecedented social protest in the national media. Next week, the same old men and women will take their protest to the streets. The government may fall.
The primary issue may be medical cards but the core value at the heart of the [...]
The state of the Ireland’s maternity services is deeply unsatisfactory. In August of last year, in considerable frustration and anger at the lack of any cohesive action to make improvements, I wrote to the Irish Times (letter) to describe the situation. By budget time, it was already known that several large maternity hospitals had had [...]
The simplistic idea behind co-location - to create extra space for public patients in public hospitals by transferring the care of private patients currently occupying beds in those hospital to new private hospitals on the same campus, with the private sector encouraged to pay for these new hospitals through tax-based incentives - is deeply flawed. [...]