Losing medical cards means we are excluded from proper care

The cancellation of our medical cards has made it clear to my wife and I that the onset of major illness, necessitating hospitalisation or expensive medication to be paid for in full, would unquestionably be beyond our means.

This fact, I suggest, could only be readily apparent to any authority or authorities entrusted in examining our financial situation.

In an examination of pensioners over 70 years of age, if you hold a medical card and your income is above a stipulated ceiling, then you forfeit your right to retain the card or cards.

The combined income of my wife and myself is above the ceiling in question to such a limited degree that in the event of serious illness we would be faced with exclusion from appropriate care and, indeed, hospitalisation.

This would be to face exclusion, in the words of eminent anthropologist and author Claude Levi-Strauss, “from the universe of human obligations”.

This is not an uncommon experience in these days of The New World Order. John Kelly Mullingar, Co Westmeath

Pensioners can forfeit their right to a medical card if their income is too high