Reilly hopes to strengthen Private Health Insurance regulation next year
IMO’S GP COMMITTEE SAY ‘NO HOPE’ OF FREE GP CARE FOR ALL BY 2016
Minister for Health James Reilly said he would introduce legislation to further regulate the health insurance market to ensure it is ‘fair and transparent’.
Minister for Health James Reilly has said he will introduce legislation to further regulate the private insurance market in next year.
Speaking on RTÉ radio today Dr Reilly said he would legislate “to empower the Health Insurance Authority as the regulator of the market to ensure that we have a fair and transparent market”.
Dr Reilly said there were “far too many” private health insurance plans on the market which were confusing for customers.
“The reason (they) try to confuse you in my view is so that you can’t make a valid and valued decision in relation to what is best for you and to me that’s not right and proper or appropriate,” he said.
“The Health Insurance agency needs to have its powers beefed up so that it can dictate to the market how many policies are allowed on the market at any one given time… I am determined that we will address this issue of the proliferation of plans in the new year in order to simplify things for the consumer.”
Dr Reilly also voiced his commitment that free GP care for all would be delivered by the next general election in early 2016.
“That’s absolutely the commitment of the Government,” he said. “I am absolutely committed to it, my Government are committed to it… that remains our goal, remains an absolute must to achieve,” he said.
Reacting to his comments, the GP committee of the Irish Medical Organisation has said there is “no hope” that free GP care for all will be achieved by 2016.
Committee chairman Dr Ray Walley said Dr Reilly’s commitment that free GP care would be implemented within the next two years was “Government by sound-bite”.
“The Department of Health have no plan to support this objective and no appreciation of the resources required to implement it,” he said.
“Politicians talk up free GP care as if it’s free for everyone but the reality is that people will still pay for their GP but will simply do so indirectly through their taxes or through an insurance scheme instead of directly as at present,” he added.
Irish Government to exclude small firms from tendering for public contracts
New Government rules on the tendering and awarding of public contracts will exclude small businesses, the Small Firms Association (SFA) warned.
The organisation’s chairman said the Government’s new policies for deciding which bidders should win public contracts have the potential to eliminate small businesses from the tendering process. The rules, which seek to save taxpayers €500m, emphasise cost-saving and electronic transactions.
“In its pursuit of the cheapest price, the Government is neglecting the fact that this will not deliver either the quality, cost-in-use savings or service levels it desires – but will result in lost jobs,” said SFA chairman AJ Noonan.
He was speaking at the organisation’s annual lunch in the former Burlington Hotel in Dublin, now trading as a Hilton DoubleTree Hotel. The SFA also called for better access to credit for small firms in addition to a fairer public procurement system.
“Access to credit is still one of the biggest issues for small firms,” said Mr Noonan. One in four small firms still finds it hard to access credit, according to research from his organisation.
“Both AIB and Bank of Ireland claim they have a huge approval rate for loan applications from businesses, but there is shockingly low draw-down levels.
“This is because the price and terms and conditions attached to these loans are just not feasible. There’s no point approving a loan if what you are offering is not actually going to be any use to the consumer.” He called on the Government to establish a new state-owned bank aimed solely at lenders, modelled on the now-defunct Agricultural Credit Corporation.
The SFA also called on the Government to clarify what Ireland’s exit from its bailout programme on December 15 will mean for small businesses here.
“Will regained sovereignty mean parity for entrepreneurs and small businesses in accessing finance and credit?” said Mr Noonan.
“Will it mean that our pension contributions will be safe from further levies?”
Transport Minister Leo Varadkar spoke at length at the event, calling among other things for a hike in the point at which Irish people are charged a higher tax rate.
Currently, the higher tax rate of 41pc kicks in on any income above €32,800 for a single person and €45,400 for a married couple or civil partners.
“Irish people are hit with the highest rate of tax even on modest incomes,” said Mr Varadkar, who added that these taxes were damaging domestic spending, which is crucial for small firms.
Lower income women more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer later
A STUDY SHOWS
Cancer charities have called for urgent action on health inequalities after a study revealed that ‘social deprivation’ may be responsible for as many as 450 avoidable deaths from breast cancer every year.
Women from lower income groups are much more likely to be diagnosed later, when cancers are more advanced and more difficult to treat, according to research to be presented at the National Cancer Research Institute conference in Liverpool today.
The treatment history of more than 20,000 women was analysed by researchers and it was found that if all groups of women had their cancers diagnosed at the same stage as the most affluent women, 40 lives could be saved.
The charity Breast Cancer Campaign called on public health leaders to give “urgent consideration” to new action to ensure breast cancer is always diagnosed early.
The research was funded by Cancer Research UK. Dr Julie Sharp, head of health information at the charity, said that other research had shown that poorer women were more likely to feel “embarrassed or worried” about going to see their GP.
“People are much more fearful of serious illnesses in a deprived community, perhaps more so than in more affluent areas where better access to accurate information allows people to know that cancer isn’t necessarily a death sentence,” said Dr Simon Abrams, a GP in Everton, which has the most deprived population in England, according to Department of Health indicators. “There is a lack of information about symptoms and also a fear factor that is quite substantial,” he told The Independent.
Eluned Hughes, head of public health at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: “By focusing on improving early diagnosis particularly in deprived areas we can have most impact in stopping women dying from breast cancer.”
“Most cases of breast cancer are found by women noticing unusual changes in their breasts and visiting their GPs. The earlier breast cancer is found, the better the chance of beating it, so it is important women check regularly.
Dr Sharp added: “All women should be aware of how their breasts normally look and feel because we know that early diagnosis is one of the most important factors in whether breast cancer treatment is effective.”
In Ireland, there were 2,463 new cases of breast cancer diagnosed in 2007 making it the most common invasive cancer in Irish women.
Introducing a do it at-home fertility test for men
To any man rushing out to buy the new over-the-counter fertility test available from Boots, I say this: enjoy the excitement while it lasts. For you, the chance to find out whether your sperm count is “normal” or “low”’ may feel like one small step for a man.
But women know that when that first packet of Sperm Check Fertility drops into the shopping basket you’ve taken one thumping great leap for mankind – straight into an abyss of anxiety.
Today, that quickie test – taking 10 minutes, available for just £29.99 – may make you feel “in control” of your end of the fertility business, revealing who is hitting the World Health Organisation’s target level of 20 million or more sperm per millilitre.
Tomorrow, you may purchase a second test, or a third, or bulk-buy online “for friends”, because it was “fun” or “fascinating” to do, or you dropped the test in the loo, or the result can’t be right and must be due to yesterday’s bike ride, or those tight trousers, or that hot bath, or actually because the first test was clearly part of the two per cent margin of error quoted by manufacturers.
From now on, you are just one more minnow swimming about in the maelstrom of an infertility business estimated to be worth £3 billion globally and rising, shopping for facts and certainties, when all you can really do is grasp at hopes and dreams.
Welcome, gentlemen, to our world, where women are constantly sold the promise of “control” – over our faces, figures and finances, but especially over our fertility. The world where we’ll happily spend all our disposable income and more on products to assist conception: from expensive herbal supplements to ovulation kits, pregnancy detectors to thermometers. The world where oocytes – egg cells, to the uninitiated – are an obsession, not a high score in Scrabble. For now it’s your turn to enter this emporium of reasons to rejoice, or to despair.
Perhaps you are tempted by some red healing crystals, or Ayurvedic medicine, or even the prospect of “Snowballs” cooling underwear (still in development, and based on the theory that the testes need to be kept cool to produce healthy sperm). Or maybe you just want to stock up on one of the vitamin supplements packed full of amino acids and herbs known to thin the blood, in the hope of improving erectile quality.
Of course, the reality for men – as for women – is far less frivolous than my shopping lists suggest.
Male fertility is in decline, as research published last December showed. Between 1989 and 2005, average sperm counts fell by a third in a study of 26,000 men, increasing their risk of infertility, according to researchers from the Institut de Veille Sanitaire in St Maurice. The quantity of healthy sperm produced was also reduced, by a similar proportion.
The findings, published in the journal Human Reproduction, confirmed findings over the past 20 years that shows sperm counts declining across the world. Many reasons, ranging from tight underwear to toxins in the environment, have been advanced to explain the fall, but no definitive cause has been found. The European Commission has even set up a working group, Reprotrain, to tackle the increasing crisis around “Male Reproductive Biology and Andrology”.
Some men won’t need the new test. They already know, or suspect, they have a problem (it is estimated that problems with sperm account for about a third of known fertility problems) but are probably suffering in silence. Far less attention, after all, is paid to the psychological effect failure to conceive can have on men.
Jo Hemmings, a behavioural psychologist and relationship coach, says: “Perhaps because women are deemed to have a stronger maternal instinct than men’s paternal instinct, and gestate, give birth and breast feed, they have received more attention than men. And so men are often seen as having an almost interdependent role – more of a support role to their partner’s emotions, than a need to express emotions in their own right.”
Men do not have quite the same sort of societal “permission” to express feelings around infertility, she notes. “Yet for many men, there are feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, guilt, shame and anger. This can often lead to a withdrawal from communication – and indeed sexual dysfunction – making the problem that much more difficult.” Old stereotypes have not done much to help. Men with fertility problems may find it grimly ironic that, until recently, all males were considered fertile until proven otherwise, even in old age. And there were only two realistic ways of altering that: a vasectomy or condoms.
For, just as attention has focused on women’s experiences of infertility, so has the medical establishment concentrated on women’s control of fertility.
Scientists have been talking about a male contraceptive pill since the early 1980s (with many women sceptical as to whether they would trust a man to take it), but we are still not there.
According to the NHS, research is focusing on combinations of hormones – synthetic testosterone and progestogens – with some in phase III trials, the last stage of clinical trial before a medicine is given a marketing licence. Scientists in Israel are looking into how blood-pressure drugs called calcium channel blockers (such as nifedipine) may alter the metabolism of sperm so that they are not able to fertilise an egg – such a pill could be on offer as early as 2015, researchers suggest. We won’t hold our breath.
In the meantime, rising levels of anxiety seem to be doing a better job on suppressing fertility than hormones. Researchers note that the increase in the number of men diagnosed with infertility seems to correlate with increasing anxiety in general. In July, psychiatrists at the University of Cambridge and the University of Hertfordshire reported that more than 8 million people in Britain suffer from anxiety disorders – up from 2.3 million people in a 2007 study.
Of course, infertility makes people anxious, raising the possibility of a vicious cycle. The impact of male infertility is an area “where the man’s psychological and physiological reactions should be considered far more seriously than current research would suggest”, argues Hemmings.
And yet, silence still surrounds the issue in many quarters. Visitors to the female-dominated Mumsnet website forum discussing conception quickly learn that there is no such thing as TMI (too much information) among women desperately seeking reassurance as they attempt to get a BFP (Big Fat Positive) line on their pregnancy test. But hop over to the Men’s Health site forum on “becoming a dad” and users seem more worried about whether their wives will still be attractive after giving birth.Look, too, to the Hollywood stars who – refreshingly – are admitting to fertility problems more openly than before; they are overwhelmingly female. You won’t find many men risking their He-Man reputations. A rare exception is Tom Arnold, the hero of True Lies and ex-husband of Roseanne Barr, who said earlier this year: “I have a very low sperm count. I didn’t think fatherhood was in the cards for me, I’ll be honest.”
Given this backdrop, perhaps SpermCheck will help to get men talking about infertility as openly as women do. Certainly, men and women need to accept when there is a legitimate problem – and not be afraid to ask for support. At the time of the contraceptive pill being introduced, Germaine Greer said: “The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood.”
Fifty years on, how we handle infertility is at least as vital.
Rare solar hybrid Eclipse this Sunday see it
Heres how to view it
There’s a rare hybrid solar eclipse coming on Sunday, and no matter where you are in the world, you will be able to see it — thanks to the Internet.
The eclipse will be easy to see from Africa, the Middle East, southern Europe, the Caribbean, and Northern South America. The eastern U.S. and Canada will also have a chance to view the event, but it could be more difficult. People living in this region that wish to see the eclipse should make sure they have an “open view” of the eastern horizon.
If you live on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, in parts of southern Europe or anywhere in Africa, then you can enjoy this eclipse firsthand with a little planning and the proper viewing glasses, of course.
If you live in Los Angeles or somewhere that is not any of the places mentioned above, then you will have to turn to your computer if you want to watch the eclipse live.
Luckily, Paul Cox, an astronomer at the online observatory Slooh.com, is shepherding a telescope and other equipment to a remote spot in Kenya, where he plans to live-stream the total eclipse to viewers across the world.
Those of us on the West Coast will have to get up early if we want to see the total eclipse as it happens. The Slooh broadcast begins at 3:45 a.m. PST Sunday. (We will have just set our clocks back as we moved from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time). The broadcast, which also include feeds from telescopes in Gabon, Africa, and the Canary Islands, will end at 7:15 a.m. PST.
The Nov. 3 eclipse is known as a hybrid eclipse. When it first occurs, it will be in the annular form, which is also known as a ring eclipse. At this point, the moon is not quite big enough to fully cover the sun, so it leaves what’s known as a ring of fire around its periphery. But as the eclipse moves east, the curvature of the Earth makes the moon appear larger, and by the time the eclipse gets to central Africa, the moon will cover the sun entirely.
If you are on the East Coast of the U.S., you can catch a partial eclipse, in which the sun will appear to have a bite taken out of it, at 6:30 a.m. EST on Sunday. Get yourself to a place where you have a clear view of the eastern horizon, and make sure you have eclipse glasses or No. 13 or No. 14 welder’s glasses. But don’t be late. Your window of opportunity to see the partial eclipse is just 30 minutes.
If you want more information about what our East Coast friends will see Sunday morning, check out Sky and Telescope’s story about the eclipse. The site has also put together this handy graphic to help you understand when and where the eclipse will be visible.
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