Liberals' health-care policy is a lot of nothing

Re: "Finding sustainable healthcare solutions", The St. Catharines Standard, Sept. 26, 2006
This editorial states "opponents of private medicine should realize there is room for the provision of services from private sources. Diagnostics is a good place to start."
If that sentiment meant anything to the likes of Premier Dalton McGuinty, Health Minister George Smitherman, or St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley, then the Liberals would divest themselves of the diagnostic MRI's which they appropriated from the private sector in 2004.
The Standard's editorial, "Battling non-sensical health-care red-tape" (Sept.25, 2006) said: "It's time...Smitherman turned his attention to Suzanne Aucoin's plight. Clearly, Ontario's health-care system has lost it's way."
If healthcare is such a priority for McGuinty, then why did he recently dilute Smitherman's attention by appointing him deputy premier?
Isn't Smitherman busy enough as head of Ontario's costliest ministry?
Why was the Liberal government caught off guard and surprised by the recent emergency-room doctor shortages?
McGuinty, in a duplcitous epiphany, boasts he has reduced wait-times because Liberals recognize that salary caps suppress doctors' productivity. However, it was David Peterson's Liberals, including Bradley, who imposed salary caps. Why isn't Bradley today complaining about overpaid doctors?
Why have we heard nothing more about private insurance?
Would such an option, had it not been banned in Ontario, have helped patients like Aucoin? Could it have helped Margaret Cowal ("She just wanted to live", The St. Catharines Standard, Oct.5, 2006), who died while on the Liberals' healthcare waiting list?
If McGuinty had millions to waste rebranding the trillium logo and flooding us with his pretentious commercials, then he had the $54,000 for the treatment which may have saved Cowal's life.
Must Ontarians be subjected to inferior care, suffering or death so that Liberals may indulge their lofty socio-political ideology?
Not only is the Liberals' failing healthcare status-quo a sickening, shameful "stop-gap" measure, it may turn out to be unconstitutional as well.
R. Bobak, St. Catharines Standard, Oct.12, 2006