Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Doing our best not be bruised by the velvet fist of socialized medicare

[click photo to enlarge]

Here’s a typical headline and story similar to what Americans would also be seeing in their local papers if they finally are blessed with socialized, government-run, single-payer, universal health-care like we have in Ontario.

This article appeared in the St. Catharines Standard on Mar.12, 2008. and is nothing new for our system. In fact, unless you’re ill, no-one seems to care anymore: we are resigned to these constant delays and low-standard results from socialized medicare.

This headline, so typical in Canada, is a sample of the future the Americans have to look forward to if they pursue Ontario as a health-care role model to emulate. And if that happens in the States, where are Ontario’s Liberals going to send ill patients then?? At this time, the American system is there taking the pressure (and the accountability) off the Dalton McGuinty Liberal medicare-monopoly in Ontario. What will Liberals do when Buffalo no longer has room to accept Ontario patients, thanks to the spread of medical socialism down in the U.S.?

Liberal MPP Kim Craitor from Niagara Falls is still calling for a review of the NHS?!

What…again?! Craitor and Jim Bradley, another Liberal MPP from St. Catharines, were already through that phony charade months ago, as I’ve outlined several times.

How many times do these Liberal clowns keep re-announcing the same thing? They RUN THE HEALTH CARE system!! How is it possible that this Liberal government, after five years in power - and with a MAJORITY government - purports with frustration that they’re not satisfied with these results within the Niagara Health System? (As if these Liberals had no influence or bearing whatsoever on these results in the first place!) Who is accountable here?

The Liberal government has FULL control of the NHS! They can override the board and appoint a supervisor immediately – as they have ALREADY done in other failing health networks in monopoly-Ontario! They can then appoint the Ombudsman to investigate the NHS immediately!

The problem with that (for Liberals) is that Craitor and Bradley would also then have to reveal why the NHS was found by a Nov. 2007 CIHI study to have the third-highest death rate in Canada.

We’ve never heard Craitor, Bradley, or Liberal Premier McGuinty, or Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman give –or, more pointedly publicly even commit to finding out - the reasons behind that shocking revelation. We’ve also not heard them respond to the NHS request for more funding: are the hospital’s high death-rate and the surgery delays a result of Liberal funding decisions? Will we ever know?

This Liberal health-care monopoly charade just keeps on getting worse. Liberals like Craitor keep on spitting into the wind with their ‘Potemkin-village’ calls for some half-assed “operational” review of the NHS.

Having the Ministry of Health investigate itself will yield a report as phony as a three dollar bill.

The problem here is one of trust and accountability: there is none. This Liberal-run health system has no competition, no checks, no balances. We have no idea about the cost-effectiveness or appropriateness of any random Liberal health-care funding allocation. We just have to take their word for it, and accept what's handed out to us: legally, we have no alternatives.

The Liberals, in my opinion, can’t be trusted as the sole-distributors of health-care in Ontario, simply because they are held-harmless and unaccountable for the blow-back to patients caused by their Liberal health care duplicity. No criminal or civil charges will hold anyone to blame. The Liberals view their re-election as a pass to wreak more monopoly havoc upon Ontario patients. The Liberals believe only they have a divine right to spend the some-38 billion dollars of our health-care tax money.

Those 190 delayed patients (this just in Niagara; who knows how many others got cancelled today in the rest of Ontario…and, then, tomorrow’s yet another day…and another delay…) were inconvenienced and suffered on behalf of a phony health system propagated by the McGuinty government.

When a hospital spokeswoman said that “We fully recognize and appreciate the impact that any type of postponement has on our patients…” how contrite is that? How acceptable is that? Here’s a way for you to really “recognize” that you have a big problem: getting sued for your failure to provide health care services promised by the Liberal government.

There’s no other way (is there?) to hold these Liberal politicians accountable for their health care monopoly mess. What choice do we have: suffer and wait and put up with it; sue your local Liberal franchise monopoly representative, or go to Buffalo for your health care (which could soon also become a non-option). We have no “contract” to hold the Liberals to. Their political health-care posturing has the freedom of non-accountability, as we are seeing at the NHS. No one’s to blame, right? It’s “the system” vaguely to be blamed, right…NEVER any specific Liberal politician! The 'virtual' promises of the medicare salespeople are just that: virtual, not actually 'literal', or even enforceable.

“We’re doing our best…” the hospitals say. Well, they are put into an untenable and unwinnable position by the unrealistic monopoly-health-care politics of the Liberals. This is what socialized medicare looks like folks: this is the bruising we get from the velvet fist of Tommy Douglas.

No comments: