The chief minster says Lawrie Hooper is 'clutching at straws' after quitting as health minister.
The Ramsey MHK is accusing Alfred Cannan of wanting to privatise the NHS.
But Mr Cannan has refuted these claims.
Manx Newscast
Manx Newscast: Chief Minister reacts to Lawrie Hooper resignation
Well, I want to thank Laurie Hooper for the work that he's done, but there's a lot of challenges facing the health care system and department at the moment. And, you know, my job is to get on and to do the very best we can to tackle those challenges and try and get health care funding back into a position where it is operating within the budget so that it's allocated and that we have some sort of recognition of what is potentially needed for the future if any adjustments are indeed needed. Laurie Hooper was quite critical in what he said about you, that you were intent on privatizing the health service you said in Timmord, that that's not on the table. But the free at the point of use model, will you commit to that? Laurie Hooper is just clutching at straws, I'm afraid. I mean, the bottom line is, you know, the reason why this is at this crunch point is because this continued overspend is now having a very damaging effect in terms of the compound amounts that it is impacting on our budgets and our future budgets and the amount that it potentially eats into our reserves. So I would not be raising this as a critical issue, but I thought we had the money simply just to throw at the problem. We do not have the money to throw at the problem. We cannot just bury our heads in the sand. You know, I have a responsibility as Chief Minister to absolutely raise issues and get issues addressed if I believe they are having a serious impact or likely to have a serious impact on the island. This will have a serious impact on our future funding. Laurie Hooper and others just want to raise taxation and throw more money at the problem. I actually think that before we even go down or get close to that route, we must look at the functionality in terms of the financial performance of Manx Care because it's absolutely clear that it is seriously lacking an ability to financially plan properly for the services. We must also be clear on the services that we are asking Manx Care to perform. There are many productivity issues in terms of efficiencies within the service that I know can be addressed, and we have heard a lot of that from various groups of doctors. We must get to the bottom of that and get to that very, very quickly, and we must get to a position where we again have confidence in Manx Care's ability to operate next year within budget because it doesn't matter how, when you get to this sort of position, it doesn't matter how much money you throw into the healthcare system. It always wants to come back for more. We brought forward huge amounts of funding, including £43 million in this tax year, with a call on the general public for more taxation. We have got to get ourselves into a position where we can talk confidently to the public about healthcare funding, knowing that the organisation can properly plan, can properly control its finances and be clear on the services that it's delivering for the money that it's got. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]