Terence Flanagan
Question:481. Deputy Terence Flanagan asked the Minister for Health his plans to review the medical card limit; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29708/15]
View answerThursday, 16 July 2015
Questions (481)
Written answers
The Health Service Executive has been asked to examine this matter and to reply to the Deputy as soon as possible. The Health Service Executive operates the General Medical Services scheme, which includes medical cards and GP visit cards, under the Health Act 1970, as amended. In assessing eligibility for a medical card the HSE has due regard to the legislation and regulations and issues income guidelines to assist in determining who has entitlement to a card. Following on from the publication of the Report of the Expert Panel on Medical Need for Medical Card Eligibility and the Medical Card Process Review in November 2014, the Minister and I identified, and had implemented, a range of actions to improve the operation of the medical card system, particularly for people with significant medical needs.
A detailed programme of reform was drawn up by the HSE with short, medium and long-term actions to be addressed over the period 2015-2016. The HSE has already implemented a number of short term and medium term processes identified in the programme of reform and work is underway on the longer term actions. To this end, the HSE put arrangements in place for a more integrated and sensitive processing of medical card applications involving significant medical conditions with greater interaction between the central office regarding the assessment of a person’s eligibility and the local health office regarding the person’s medical condition and the services that they may require. With respect to medical card and GP visit card coverage, as of the 1st of July 42.9% of the population have either a medical card or GP visit card. Of the 1.9m medical or GP visit cards in circulation on the 1st of July, 88,604 are discretionary medical cards and 39,829 are discretionary GP visit cards, an increase of 11,939 and 5,224 respectively since January this year.
Also as part of the Governments plans for universal GP care the under 6s now have access to GP services without charge and from early August all persons over 70 will be entitled to GP services without charge. This will mean that by the end of the summer, all 800,000 people aged over 70 and under 6 will be able to visit a GP without facing a financial barrier. This will be a significant step towards a universal GP service for the entire population.
If the Deputy has not received a reply from the HSE within 15 working days, please contact my Private Office who will follow up the matter with them.