Caplan plays coy about further cuts in his Liberal health-monopoly

above: St. Catharines Standard, Mar.16, 2009.
Click photos to enlarge.
below: St. Catharines Standard, Mar.14, 2009.

I wrote in "A Predictable Pattern Of Bold Deception", (St. Catharines Standard, Mar. 14, 2009):

"Re:1,000 jobs gone: nurses' union (March 6).

St. Catharines Liberal MPP and health-care monopolist Jim Bradley has never answered questions as to whether the promised 10,000 nurses were ever hired, let alone specifically explain how we can independently monitor that another 9,000 more nurses will be ever hired by the lying McGuintyite Liberals in Ontario.

What data has Health Minister David Caplan provided, besides typical Liberal "just trust us" rhetoric and unverifiable claims? Bradley hides from scrutiny when he is asked to answer for his Liberal government's health-care cuts, consolidations and mismanagement.

Bradley supports a state-run health-care monopoly that purposefully underfunds its own system; forced to run deficits because it is forced by Liberal law to rely solely on the whims of Liberal ideologues for its funding.

Dalton McGuinty's Liberals are taking billions from Ontario taxpayers with their health tax, yet are cutting health-care budgets and services. The McGuinty Liberals have also cut $50 million from nurse funding and now say that hiring their ficticious "9,000 more" nurses will be "pushed back" -- probably to, oh, about three months before the next election, so the Liberals can re-announce their stale, deceptive intentions once again.

The pattern of bold deception peddled by this Liberal gang of duplicitous ideologues is staggering and, sadly, predictable."

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On the heels of my Mar.14, 2009 letter in the Standard, was this article in the Mar.16, 2009 St. Catharines Standard, headed "Caplan won't rule out OHIP cuts":

"Delisting can't be ruled out during tough economic times, but there are no plans right now to clamp down on rising health-care costs by removing services currently covered by the province, said Health Minister David Caplan.

Ontario is expected to rack up an $18-billion deficit by next April, and experts say growth in annual government spending will have to slow to only two to three per cent if the province is to balance the books once the economy turns around.

When Ontario was grappling with a $5.6-billion deficit left by the former Conservative government in 2004, the Liberals delivered a budget that introduced a health premium of up to $900 per person and delisted eye exams, chiropractic services and physiotherapy.

Now that the province is in the throes of a major economic slump, there are fears that the government may delist more services to get ballooning health-care costs under control.
Caplan said delisting is "not an area I look to first" but acknowledged that all spending will be reviewed.

"We want to take a look at what we're doing and how we can do it better," Caplan said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press.

"If it doesn't make sense, we're going to stop doing it. If it makes sense, we're going to do more of it. And I think that's a fair kind of mindset to have."

While Caplan said he doesn't know the details of the March 26 budget, he added that he has not asked Finance Minister Dwight Duncan to cut services in order to curb spending."

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Caplan WON'T rule out cuts?! Are they even on the table??

What kind of spin are these Liberals trying to pull on Ontarians now?? Has Caplan already given up fighting on the behalf of patient/prisoners who are stuck in his Liberal no-patient-choice health-care morass??

As health minister of Ontario's state-run MONOPOLY health-system, he damn well better step up the plate and make it known NOW - before the budget - that he will not tolerate ANY cuts.
If Liberals have any decency and common sense left, they ought to know that BECAUSE their health system is a state-run, state-funded monopoly, they are undermining their own cause when they lay this Michael Decter - ish (see here, pg.11-12) "we're cutting health-care to save it" bait-and-switch bullsh!t on us.

Why should health care suffer when McGuinty's Ontario is in the "throes of a major economic slump"? McGuinty owes Ontarians the decency to prioritize his ministries, and to cut his spending anywhere else BUT health-care - since he has made it illegal for patients to pay for their own medical provision.

If McGuinty's Liberals cut OHIP - again - while having the audacity to still enforce their single-payer, state-run monopoly, and still collect their hated 'Greg Sorbara Health Tax', then that should be a cause for Charter lawsuits on a class-action, revolutionary scale.

I wouldn't put it past them, though.

Forget "delisting" as a phony solution to so-called "ballooning health care costs" (which "ballooned" under Liberal control; so much for that 'government-can-do-it-cheaper' Michael Moore - ish-fantasy), what we need is a DE-MONOPOLIZING of the health care system.

That is the "mindset" that Bradley, Caplan, and the entire gang of McGuintyites, ignore.

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Janis Jaffe-White wrote in "More cuts in OHIP coverage", (Toronto Star, Jan.20, 2009):

"Perhaps Ontario Health Minister David Caplan can also address why it is that there have been cutbacks to OHIP's coverage of bone density testing. It used to be that patients could have a bone density test every year insured by OHIP when it was determined that the test is needed. Not anymore. In many cases, it now takes three years.

When prevention is considered key within our health-care system, one wonders why there have been such cutbacks in OHIP coverage. It's fine and dandy for the honourable minister to announce the expansion of OHIP coverage in some areas but it should be unacceptable that the health and well-being of Ontarians is compromised due to coverage cutbacks in other areas."

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Well, look at that: Health care is BEING COMPROMISED BY DALTON McGUINTY"S LIBERALS !?

What??!?

What cutbacks??

But . . . Liberals told us they increased health-care funding, services, nurses, beds..! hahaha

Tell us that these accusations of Liberal bait-and-switch health-care cuts aren't true, Mr. Caplan!!

Tell us - as Smitherman, the previous Liberal clown of a health-minister before you, did - that this is only hearsay; only anecdotal; only an obscure superstition; tell us that, if McGuinty's Magnificent Liberals are cutting health care . . . they are doing so to SAVE health care !! (Michael Decter and NDP-eer Bob Rae said the same thing in Ontario in the 1990's!!!)

Tell us, Oh Great Caplan, that only Liberal health-care monopolists can take our health dollars, and that only Liberals can decide where our money is to be spent!!

Jim Bradley, please - you must try to somehow, anyhow, blame this on MIKE HARRIS! Jim, you worked so hard blaming Mike for everything that was evil in this world - so, don't let us down now!!

We need some of that mellifluous Bradleyesque BS that you're famous for, where your mouth moves for ten minutes, and afterwards, nobody can remember what it was - if anything - that you said!

For years, St. Catharines Good Ole Homeboy, Jimmy Bradley, blamed anything and everything he could possibly think of on Harris, including ludicrous, almost-daily accusations of Harris' supposed wholesale destruction of health-care in Ontario! (. . . which, of course, didn't happen until Bradley, McGuinty, Sorbara and Smitherman began butchering it!)

What Bradley and his odious, Duplicitous Liberals have themselves actually done to Ontario health care is far worse than what for years they alleged Harris might do!!
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