A heartless HSE can’t even get its own excuses straight

AMAN within weeks of his 100th birthday is told that his painkilling prescription, which is the difference between him being able to walk or not, has been suddenly removed from his medical card. His doctor, who has prescribed the pain relieving patches, appeals to the Department of Health and is refused. His is just one of the hundreds of deeply disturbing stories that have emerged since the State decided that 90% of people in chronic pain will only be able to continue using the Versatis patches if they can afford to buy them themselves.

As a number of older people who suffer with pain have told me, their weekly pension would not cover even a month’s supply of the life-changing patches.

Nothing has characterised this debacle more than the contradictory, ever-changing reasons the Government has used to justify what one politician labelled as ‘the cruellest cut ever inflicted on sick people’.

Firstly the Government medic who made the decision revealed that money was the main reason the patch, used by 25,000 sufferers, had been dropped from the medical card. The figures since released about the cost of the drug have varied from €25-€40m. Which of these two numbers do we believe, if any of them?

And if the figures and volume of users are so high, surely the State can do a better deal with the German suppliers on the high cost we pay for the patches compared with countries like Spain and the United States?

A week later the Minister for Health asserts that the cutback was made by ‘clinicians’ – despite their earlier protestations that it was all about the money. Another argument then lobbed in by the decision makers is the choice between ‘cancer drugs, people on hospital trolleys ‘and funding Versatis’. To pit one set of sick people against another for resources seems especially cruel.

This was followed by a statement from the HSE saying the side effects of Versatis patches, which are applied to the skin, are very low. But in seemingly total contradiction, the medic who made the decision introduces ‘cancer’ as one of the risks – based on one scientific paper where rats were forced to eat the chemical in the patches in large quantities and ended up with mouth and nose problems.

One senior academic has raised questions about why there is very little research into chronic pain management. It seems most of the research goes into cancer.

Pain is difficult to measure – so the effectiveness of products can be difficult to assess. Another reason for the 90% cutback is that doctors were prescribing it for pain other than ‘shingles’. But surely when it comes to pain management the first research port of call should be pain consultants and GPs working face to face with sufferers who, in their droves, were finding that the patches were working better than alternative tablets – and with fewer side effects.

Doctors were not consulted before this massive cutback was announced. They are now told that the patches have been discontinued immediately for medical card holders but your GP can apply for them, and if the application is rejected – which 90% are – the doctor then needs to submit a very detailed appeal on your behalf as you suffer in silence .

I know it’s difficult for a Government faced with massive challenges like Brexit, the Northern crisis and the National Plan to deal compassionately with what they see as a small group of people.

But how we treat our fellow citizens who are suffering greatly is a much better measure of us as a people than any cold, ever-changing economic statistic.