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	The Government&#39;s announcement that &euro;113m savings were to be made from a review of eligibility of medical card holders will surely strike fear into the hearts of struggling parents this weekend.</h2>
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		It came sandwiched between the giving of free GP care to under fives and taking medical cards back from 35,000 elderly people on single income of more than &euro;500 a week or &euro;900 as a couple.</p>
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		But saving &euro;113m by taking medical cards off people who were not entitled to them is the one that will cause most sleepless nights.</p>
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		The figure is huge by any standards, and not only that, the announcement is disturbingly short on detail.</p>
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		Are there really &euro;113m&#39;s worth of medical card holders out there claiming free healthcare they aren&#39;t entitled to? And how many people does &euro;113m in savings equate to?</p>
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		Unfortunately, Health Minister James Reilly couldn&#39;t say. At a press briefing following the Budget, he admitted he didn&#39;t know how many people might lose their cards as a result of this &quot;review&quot;.</p>
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		So how did the Government arrive at this figure of &euro;113m?</p>
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		As it turns out, the trumpeted medical review process is actually a continuation of work the department and the HSE began last year. A PricewaterhouseCoopers report commissioned by the HSE put the potential exposure from payments to ineligible medical card holders at between &euro;65m and &euro;210m a year. So the &euro;113m savings target chosen by the Government lies somewhere between the two. This review process is also some way down the road. According to the Government&#39;s C&amp;AG report, more than one million cards stand to be reviewed by the HSE between May this year and April 2014.</p>
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		The junior health minister, Alex White, explained that new data sharing between government departments means it&#39;s now easier to root out overpayments in the system.</p>
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		He said in some cases the State was paying GPs for patients who have died or gone abroad.</p>
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		The department did some surveys of its own too. According to Mr White, 73pc of medical card holders surveyed were found to be eligible. Four per cent were not. And 21pc of medical card holders didn&#39;t even reply to the survey, he said.</p>
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		But that doesn&#39;t mean that those who didn&#39;t apply were not eligible for medical cards. A more likely scenario is that they were too terrified to fill in the form. What struggling parent is not going to look suspiciously at a government-generated survey asking for details about their income for an in-house survey of medical card eligibility?</p>
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		Most would probably bin it.</p>
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		<a href="http://www.independent.ie/business/budget/maeve-sheehan-review-of-card-holders-eligibility-will-terrify-parents-29662907.html">http://www.independent.ie/business/budget/maeve-sheehan-review-of-card-holders-eligibility-will-terrify-parents-29662907.html</a></p>
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