Funferal

What’s wrong with this picture?

From tomorrow’s Irish Times:

Hospitals should look at the possibility of charging families the full cost of caring for their elderly relatives in acute hospital beds where these families have “blocked” the discharge of their relatives from hospital, according to an unpublished report commissioned by the Health Service Executive, writes Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent.
…
The consultants, Tribal Secta, found huge numbers of patients whose discharges had been delayed, particularly at Dublin’s main hospitals, because of a lack of alternative facilities in the community.

So, families are refusing to remove their relatives from hospital because there’s nowhere suitable to place them, so the solution of these ‘consultants’ is to penalise the relatives? Surely the solution is to increase the number, range, and suitability of step-down facilities in the community.
I’m tired of having to admit to colleagues here in the United States that, actually, we don’t have a proper universal healthcare system in Ireland. I’m tired of the stories of the woefully inadequate system we do have, of our criminally negligent medical consultants and surgeons. We’re now one of the richest countries in the world – surely a world-class health-system that serves the needs of its people is not to much to expect?