I refer to the news item entitled Reshuffle increases rift between PM and backbench by Stephen Calleja (TMIS, 21 February) in which he states: “They [Cabinet members] made particular reference to Dr Farrugia’s declaration that he will vote against the primary health care reform unless changes are made to the proposals. Would he have said so if he had been made parliamentary secretary for health, they asked?”.

I guess that anyone who was pushing for the frontbench would have best avoided addressing such real issues. But in any case, the fact that my decision not to vote for the Health Care Act (if public primary health is privatised) was leaked discredits your correspondent completely. I was publicly on record to be against this reform from as soon as it was published in early December until the very day before the PM redistributed a number of portfolios – not the reshuffle about which Calleja wrote so enthusiastically for weeks on end, following the PN MEP election landslide defeat.

Allow me to refer to several opinion pieces in the same issue. Josanne Cassar wrote: “An MP voices dissent, but the next day pledges loyalty”. In fact, it was a priori on 8 February, in Parliament, that I stressed how “loyal dissent arises because one cares, because one can be bothered; loyal dissent springs from a shared concern about society.” But the media spins and spins, Charles Flores falsely hoping that “the time to say goodbye may come much earlier than we think”, knowing full well that I did give my assurance that government’s stability was not put into question.

While agreeing with Noel Grima that “...ensuring healthcare remains free... is a key Christian Democrat way of looking at social services”, I can only emphasise that this is even more so for basic primary community health care. As adamantly proposed by Government since March last year, Grima is totally wrong in postulating that proposals do not involve people paying money. Pink and yellow card holders were only to be entitled to a limited number of free consultations while households even marginally above the ‘at risk of poverty line’ of around E150 weekly income were to be totally excluded from the option of free GP service, except for the occasional free ‘walk in’ into the eventual still understaffed pseudo secondary care health centres.

Previously a very affordable family doctor down south, now a famous entrepreneur in private health services, but consistently a right wing politician, it is no wonder that Josie Muscat is so much in favour of such proposals already in force due to the reduction of GPs in government service. Colin Crouch, Professor of Sociology, describes how in the UK: “firms in the health business have made it clear to the government that they are not very interested in picking up failures; they want a chance to run easier and therefore more profitable parts of the system. The skill of the entrepreneur lies precisely in spotting the most profitable niches and avoiding low-earning activities. This is very different from the logic of the public sector, which has to provide a universal service and is prohibited from cherry-picking...”

Those who are finding it convenient to blame Mater Dei’s shortcomings on primary care providers should stop passing the buck! Reading Emergency: Irish hospitals in chaos by Marie O’Connor should prove quite refreshing: “Primary care is a mirage. Of the planned primary care centres, only a quarter will be operational by 2011 and primary medical teams promised were denounced by leading GPs as virtual. Even if these cyberspace teams had an earthly existence, moving care from hospitals to the community is a vast, untried experiment. Central to this is the shortage of acute public hospital beds.”

Dr Jean-Pierre Farrugia MD, MP

BLATA L-BAJDA