The cancellation of our medical cards has made clear to my wife and me that the onset of major illness necessitating expensive hospitalisation or medication minus a medical card would unquestionably be beyond our means. It is a fact, I suggest, which 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.” A not uncommon experience in these days of the New World Order.

John Kelly 

Mullingar, Co Westmeath