The Irish healthcare system has been found to be too complex and inequitable. It is supported by funds from both the public and private sector. The European Health Management Association has embarked on a project to identify health baskets from various countries. The Irish basket is contrasted with these different countries’ contexts. A beneficial health basket ensures that it has all the services, activities and goods required for the health sector to work effectively (Smith, 2010) . The frame of Irish health basket is created by national legislation. The benefit catalogue in the Irish Health Basket is similar to that of other countries and is divided into categories such as out-patient services, drugs, home nursing and rehabilitation services. However, in other countries, there is a second level of benefit catalogues (Smith, 2010) . In the Irish system, one cannot find the detailed health benefit catalogues for inpatient and outpatient treatments that are found in the public health basket.
Breadth of the health basket in the Irish health system is divided into two categories. The first category covers less than 29 % of the population who have a medical card. The full medical cards are offered to people with lower incomes than the normal threshold and people above the age of 70 (Smith, 2010) . A new GP medical card was introduced, but has only been granted to 76,000 people, which is less than 2% of the whole population. Higher income thresholds have been introduced for the card and support for people above the age of 70 have been scrapped. A new income threshold was introduced for the age group. The second category is the non-medical card group that covers the rest of the population. Individuals belonging to both categories have the same access to public care, which covers inpatient and outpatient. Supply side factors also determine who gets first access to public health care services. However, this is not upheld in practice since patients from the private sector gain more favoritism.
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The basket framework shows the comparison between healthcares in different countries. It researches on ways of financing health care services (Smith, 2010) . The Irish health care system is based on cost sharing and has higher user fees than other countries where all citizens are charged the same GP fees. Structures of GP entitlement are too complex.
References
Smith, S. (2010). The Irish ‘health basket’: a basket case? Pricing and Reimbursement Systems in Europe, Eur J Health Econ , 11:343–350 DOI 10.1007/s10198-009-0171-4
