Irish Health Service in not Crap Shocker

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So it is done Lisbon Treaty has passed and all your grannys with be euthanized by Dinner Time tomorrow. (Dinner now 9pm as per European Norms). So until that time lets discuss some other issues. Like our health Service. It might have escaped much notice. But the annual Health Service rankings came out this week. So where did Ireland come? Bottom beaten by North Korea. No while the North Korean health service might be awesome in every way they were not in the survey. It was of 33 European Countries and Ireland ranked 13th. OMG I hear Dublin 4 shout out Surely we must suck. But what about Mary Harney’s tenure over Health surely that has been terrible. No In actually fact since becoming Minister for Health in 2004 (yes we are that old) Ireland has gone from 28th in 2006 to 13th. Yes people she has improved the Health Service.

Now I know what people will say to me. “If Ruari Quinn was minister for Health he’s have cured Death by now” and maybe he would have but we have no data to show that so the point is mute. What we have is a constant improvement of our health service in relation to the rest of Europe during her tenure as Minister for Health. I know it is not fashionable to say it but its a fact.

But what attracted me to this story was a comment by EHCI (Euro Health Consumer Index) director Dr Arne Bjornberg

“Ireland has been climbing steadily in the EHCI. However, the Irish healthcare system seems to have a domestic ‘marketing’ problem

In isolation this would seem a bit odd. But this “marketing” problem is not in isolation. Ireland is ranked as having a better health service than Britain amongst others yet few in Ireland would be surprised if our health service was behind North Korea.

But as I said this is not isolated. Look at the crime figures. Ireland has one of the lowest crime rates in the EU. Yet we have one of the highest perception of crime. I.e. Crime is low in comparison to the rest of Europe yet we are afraid of crime more then the rest of Europe. I have talked about this before. And opinioned that maybe we

just like to be scared.

But maybe that is not it. Maybe we just like to think we are crap. We like to complain, we are never happy, we think the worst. Maybe we just like the idea of living in misery, we want to live in Angela’s Ashes, because other wise we have less to moan about. Or maybe we idealise life abroad and we think the rest of Europe is a Utopia of prefect life.

This is a fundamental question I think we need to answer. Alas the comment thread will be filled not with answers to this questions but remarks about Mary Harney.