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Ms McCarthy said she was shocked that members of the health committee were unaware that the minister had flagged the issue up on the radio earlier in the week. She said: "The Workers Party in our response to the Three Year Plan for Health and Social Care challenged the contradictions between that document and the Better Hospitals Better Outcomes. The Three Year Plan highlighted £400 million needed in efficiency savings, with a heavy emphasis on the use of the Third Sector, meaning more privatisation, fragmentation and poorer clinical outcomes. No lessons have been learned from past failures. "As part of the enormous efficiency savings plan, some of the anticipated savings are intended to come through prescription charges and home care charges and this was before the additional £100 million to meet the pay award. "These two issues will lead to more people staying in hospital longer because some will be unwilling to pay and others will be unable to pay. These types of proposals should have been placed before the scrutiny committee and rejected. "At a time when poverty, deprivation, health inequalities are growing and people are struggling to make ends meet this would place an even greater burden on those who have already suffered years of systemic neglect. "If our politicians did not know about these proposals, then they have not been paying attention. The workers Party believes that when health services are stretched and huge cuts are made, those who have the least suffer the most."
