Canadians going to States for healthcare is anecdotal, says health boss Robert Bell

This is in regards to Robert Bell's letter ("American approach is definitely sicko") Globe and Mail, July 4, 2007:

Robert Bell, [who earns $667,000 (Globe and Mail, Mar.31, 2007) ] CEO of Toronto's University Health Network, claims we spend 9% of GDP to cover 100% of Canadians. But, so what that we're "insured" if we can't even find a doctor? The Ontario Medical Association's Dr. David Bach has said 1.2 million Ontarians, out of a population of 12 million, are without a doctor. The Globe (Feb. 27, 2007) reported that Ontario is short 2400 doctors. Yet Bell cites claims that "97% of Canadians had a primary doctor".

Did Bell read Carol Sherman's column in the same newspaper, the Globe and Mail, on Mar. 31, 2007 ("Wanted: One family doctor.(Get in line)") in which she outlines her difficulties in finding a doctor in Toronto, Canada's largest city? "Let me be clear," Sherman wrote, "I wasn't sick. I just wanted a doctor to remain healthy."

Bell claims that 44 million Americans are without health insurance; however, as Jeffrey Simpson wrote in The Globe (July 11, 2007), it is a gross distortion of reality to suggest that U.S. hospitals are throwing people into the streets for lack of health insurance.

Bell must be spouting his own bias that "Canadians do indeed have a better health system than our neighbours".

He says it's just "invoking anecdotes" that many Canadians have to travel to the States because the sicko Canadian system cannot deliver upon its socialist promises. Here in St. Catharines, for example, patient Suzanne Aucoin is holding a fundraiser on July 20, 2007 to pay for her cancer
treatment in the States, because OHIP refuses to cover her. Is that an anecdote, Mr. Bell? Is that an inconvenient truth to your we're better mantra?

Bell should stop marginalizing patients, who have suffered under our ideological healthcare monopoly, by referring to their experience as "anecdotal". Let's not mask evidence of the "big lie" of Canada's mythical, single-payer universality.

column, Janice Kennedy, July 8, 2007,Ottawa Citizen

Janice Kennedy writes in her pro-Michael Moore column of July 8, 2007 that "You want me to die because the procedure I need might compromise your profit margin...Not in Canada."
Here in St. Catharines, patient Suzanne Aucoin is having a fundraiser on July 20, 2007 to pay for her specialized cancer treatment in the States, because OHIP is refusing - again - to cover her.
Does Kennedy want Aucoin to die because the procedure she needs compromises Health Minister George Smitherman's sicko single-payer ideology? Yes, Janice, it is today, here in Canada, that Ontarians are suffering, victims of the Liberal-run, no-choice health-care monopoly.

TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) and the Grit health "tax/premium"

It is disappointing that our Supreme court declined to hear the TTC's appeal questioning its obligation to pay the 'health tax' for its employees. We know Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty, since 2004, always insisted that this forced payment was a premium, not a tax. However, our
local paper, the St. Catharines Standard, on Feb. 16, 2007, quoted McGuinty saying: "I don't expect to get a free ride from my opponents. I raised the health tax. I didn't do it to raise my popularity. I did that because I needed more money for healthcare." Is McGuinty lying now, in 2007, (about the premium being a tax, as he clearly now calls it), or was he lying then, in 2004, when he was calling what was obviously a tax, a premium?? His duplicity and wordplay just cost the TTC - and all taxpayers - millions of dollars. That's no free ride.

"The war for tourist bucks", Toronto Sun (July 9, 2007), by Brian Gray

Tourism Minister Jim Bradley's plan to spend 10 million dollars marketing Ontario to people who already live here is a typical Liberal smoke and mirrors waste of money. The goal is to attract tourists from outside our provincial tax jurisdiction, otherwise you're simply moving the same dollars around the same province.

Bradley, who is also the Liberal MPP for St. Catharines, sagely tells the Sun: "With gas prices higher, people maybe more inclined to stay close to home".

Yet, let's remember how Bradley sang a different tune about high gas prices when he was in opposition. When gas was only 0.62/litre , he smugly lectured to the then-governing Tories: "As thousands of tourists visit Ontario this week, they will be faced with the same circumstances facing all motorists in our province: gas price gouging by the major oil companies." (St. Catharines Standard, Aug. 22, 1997)

For years, Bradley and his Liberals made many noisy, unsubstantiated allegations about gas price-fixing. They insisted that gas price regulation was a provincial, not a federal, responsibility. They promised to regulate gas prices, to create a gas-price watchdog, and to lower the provincial gas tax.

Today, with the Liberals in power - and gas hovering at 1.04/litre, mid-July, 2007 - all of their bag-of-hot-air promises have vanished. Sadly, St. Catharines has been stuck with Jim Bradley for 30 years, since the days of disco. He used to be known as '"Gentleman Jim", now, sadly, it's more like 'B.S. Bradley'.