Actually, one doesn’t *have* to have health insurance in Ireland. There is indeed free, or at least very very cheap, healthcare. I’ve used it myself, and people close to me have had to use it, on occasion — and it works well, even if it would be *nicer* to use the for-pay option sometimes instead.

It certainly qualifies, in my opinion, as “good” free healthcare… at least compared to the costs in other countries without nationalised healthcare, such as the US, where the projected costs for a typical birth run around $10,000 in healthcare fees (I’m serious). To add personal experience, I’ve just recently received a bill for several hundred dollars for treating an injury by applying 3 stitches. If I didn’t have insurance, I would have had to pay over $5,000 for that treatment.

if I recall correctly, healthcare costs are now the leading cause of personal bankruptcy here in the US. All in all, it’s a mess.

Of course, nowadays in Ireland, paid healthcare is a “perk” that’s come to be expected in most professional jobs. That’s true, but it’s not a cost to the employer on the same scale as similar healthcare is elsewhere.

In my opinion, you need to compare Ireland’s costs and apparent downsides with the same issues in other countries — and by the yardstick of US health costs to the employee and employer, Ireland is *way* out in front there.

BTW, I’d love to know if it really *was* Haughey that drove the successful tactics that brought us into the first world; I’ll bet there’s a civil servant or two somewhere who really had many of the smart ideas, and CJ managed to pick up the credit. He wasn’t known for being shy about grabbing the limelight, after all.

If you don’t have a medical card, you aren’t entitled to a hospital bed in a public hospital without paying full price for it. You used to be, but you aren’t anymore, unless you are wholly within the public system. Primary care isn’t free – it costs around 40 euros a go to visit the doctor -. The drug payment scheme has been greatly cut back in recent years. In any case, you get pushed into very long queues to even see a consultant if there is anything wrong with you that isn’t an emergency case. There are exceptions, but that’s the general experience.