Obama's "'Public option' in health plan may be dropped", reports Sheryl Gay Stolberg in the Aug. 17, 2009 New York Times...
see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/health/policy/18talkshows.html
Looks like Howard Dean, Kucinich, Dukakis, even Ed Schultz, will be furious that their golden boy is now calling their much-hyped "public-option" as just but one "sliver" of health reform. The Times story writes of Democrat Kent Conrad predicting "that Mr. Obama would have no choice but to drop the public option.
“The fact of the matter is, there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option,” Mr. Conrad said on “Fox News Sunday.” “There never have been. So to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort.”
The co-op, modeled after rural electric and agricultural cooperatives in Mr. Conrad’s home state, would offer insurance through a nonprofit, nongovernmental consumer entity run by its members. Mr. Axelrod said one downside of a co-op, from Mr. Obama’s point of view, was that it might be unable to “scale up in such a way that would create a robust” competitor to private insurers."
I wrote about this very aspect - of co-op type reforms as being the likely outcome of all this reform debate - back on July 5, 2009 ...
see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/07/michael-dukakis-democrat-moron-and-liar.html)
In the above post I also mentioned a very interesting and telling interview that single-payer- pushing radio host Ed Schultz had with Kent Conrad, which aired on July 3, 2009. In this interview, no matter what Conrad tried to calmly tell him, Schultz would not hear it. An obviously angered Schultz kept yammering over and over at Conrad about pushing through single-payer, about getting back at the insurance companies, about polls, about 'neo-nuts', about it being better to 'fight the fight and lose it'. Conrad tried to counter Schultz saying that we can't afford to just fight and risk failure, that that was not a wise option. Conrad reminded Schultz that 'legislation does not pass by a poll of the people, it passes by a vote on the floor of Congress', and that there weren't enough votes. Now, as we see in the Aug.17, 2009 Times article: Conrad's assessment of the situation was prescient and has remained unchanged; it's essentially what he tried to tell a frothing-at-the-mouth Schultz back in July.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Liberal monopoly health care cuts are NOT 'anecdotal'!
Paul J. Henderson wrote in “Time Out for Liberals; Local seniors say program cut devastating”, (The Chilliwack Times, August 14, 2009):
“Charlotte Blair doesn't mince words when it comes to the Fraser Health Authority's decision to slash funds that pay for a seniors program she attends five days a week.
"I don't know why they are doing this," the 67-year-old told the Times Thursday. "A lot of people are hurting."
But she saves her toughest words for Chilliwack MLA John Les who has defended the cuts to a program that Fraser Health says isn't directly related to health.
"Oh baloney," Blair said. "I don't believe in that garbage. This is not right. If they close that down, a lot of people are going to go downhill and they are going to die."
On Aug. 5, Fraser Health notified the Chilliwack and District Senior Resources Society they would no longer receive the $77,000 that helps pay for the Time Out seniors day program.
The program is popular with seniors, many of whom would be shut-ins if not for the card-playing, dancing, exercises and outings they participate in.
Society president Al Hunt said this money is an essential part of the $122,000 budget and effectively cancels the Time Out program, which is relied upon directly by about 90 seniors and indirectly by 800 others.
"There are going to be about 90 seniors that have no place to go," Hunt said. "It may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people but to the people participating in the program it's a huge deal. It's the difference between having a life or not."
Hunt said letters were sent out to MLAs Barry Penner and John Les about the cuts. People from both MLAs' offices responded asking what the program was all about, something that baffled Hunt.
"[Les] is not new in town," he said of the former mayor. "The program's been running for 16 years and the City of Chilliwack has been a strong supporter."
Adrian Dix, the NDP health critic, was in Langley Tuesday, challenging Fraser Valley Liberal MLAs to fight for seniors' programs just axed by the regional health authority. Programs were cut in Chilliwack, Langley and White Rock.
"These are the programs that keep people out of acute care," Dix said. He accused the Liberals of hiding the pending cuts during the spring election campaign.
About 150 people showed up to a meeting in Chilliwack on Tuesday morning to protest the cuts.
Blair was there with her son and she said the announcement reduced her to tears, something she didn't want to do in front of her son.
"We're going to fight this as long as we can," she said. "They should leave this open. . . . Some are older than I am; over 80, some are over 90. We need this."
*
Liberals are cutting health care in British Columbia in the same fashion as Liberals are cutting health care in Liberal Liar Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario.
The problem is, they are stoically, unreasonably - possibly criminally - forcing patients to live in their despotic, no-other-choice monopoly WHILE they carry out these cuts. Patients have no other choice - which is why the States become an option for some.
This is right out of the Ontario playbook of Dalton the Liar McGuinty. No wonder Obama said (again) in Montana on Friday that his health care reform is NOT going to resemble Canada’s!
By the way, why aren’t all the smug leftist-single-payer-pushers denouncing Charlotte Blair, the way they are attacking Shona Holmes – who fought and survived Dalton McGuinty’s “cruel game” (as Ontario’s ombudsman called it) of a health monopoly in Liberal Ontario? Blair and Holmes, as well as many other victims of Canadian health monopolism, symbolize just another facet of the same argument: the danger of forced reliance on a state-run health monopoly.
When Blair says: “If they close that down, a lot of people are going to go downhill and they are going to die,” why are leftists not denouncing her as an un-Canadian fearmongerer?! She dared openly criticize the government - ban her! Marginalize her! Brand her a heretic!
We've seen all the numerous smug attacks on Shona Holmes by rabid leftists, who can't bear to see their wet-dream of a socialist single-payer health Utopia discredited by a real-life example of single-payer failure.
Another attack on Shona Holmes was Tarek Fatah's (on co-host Michael Coren's CFRB radio show, Aug.12, 2009) smug dismissal, using the left's favourite, and by now tired, derision of Holmes' experience as "anecdotal". Fatah also accused her, without substantiation, of being paid by the always-nefarious drug companies! Put on the tinfoil hat, Tarek.
Fatah was also disdainful of the Shona Holmes ad played in the U.S., saying something along the line that no one was there to respond; but, the Liberal government had TWO YEARS TO RESPOND, Tarek, publicly, right HERE in Ontario (Liberal MPP Jim Bradley has known about the Shona Holmes case for years!): the Liberals didn't bother to respond! No one cared until the ad made it to the States - suddenly every ignorant Yank single-payer-pusher was an expert on Ontario's monopolist-run health care! Jim Bradley and his Liberals said NOTHING about the Shona Holmes case for two years - and now, if asked, they have the old line ready; 'sorry, we can't comment, as it's before the courts'!
B.C. Liberals, as the Ontario Liberals, are now typically, predictably, cutting health care in their no-patient-choice monopoly...
(see: http://www.bclocalnews.com/surrey_area/aldergrovestar/news/53237182.html;
see: http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5ibrsRY5ML5mrUeWxugcfQgkCLzdA)
... whether patients like it or not.
Your surgery has been cancelled: so what? You're just a goddam "anecdote" as some Yank Obamascare-deluded single-payer-pusher, or a typical Canuck socialist, will declare. How dare you want health care when you need it? We'll decide what you need from what you want, and we'll decide when - or if - you get it! Tommy Douglas said so! [FLICK Tommy Douglas and the horse he rode in on!]
The argument which is not being made, but should be, is that single-payer, non-competitive health monopolism is not the answer to Canada's system of health universality. We need a different, hybrid, private-parallel system, such as in Europe. This kind of system should have been phased-in through all-party agreement in every province years ago. But the political, nationalistic chest-beating always devolves into who is 'more Canadian', who is an 'enemy of Canada', and who will 'save medicare for Tommy Douglas'.
The American system is not a model for us; but neither is the failing model which our monopolist provinces still stubbornly cling to today; a model which still must resort (to its smug supporter's chagrin) to export Canadians to the States for treatment when single-payer monopolism fails to deliver here.
Kevin Libin (in "Private health: our third rail", National Post, Aug.15, 2009; see: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1894803) wrote of Brian Day saying "that that any suggestion of introducing any privatized reform is caricatured into a call to end universal health care forever. "The strategy that proponents of the status quo have used is to present the Canadian public with two options, American or Canadian health care, and at least until Obama came along, anything American was evil," he says. "I don't know a single Canadian physician who would like Canada to have an American-style system." "
As we all know - Ontario's McGuinty Liberals were the poster children for that tactic. It was always deceptive 'American style two tier slippery slope credit card lookit Bush' fearmongering with them! The Liberals regularly perpetuated this caricature, on the federal and provincial level.
Libid writes: "...surveys regularly find that the majority of Canadians are just fine with private insurance, and private hospitals, provided everyone is guaranteed access to health care when they need it. Yet raising the idea is perilous for a politician. When former Alberta premier Ralph Klein announced in 2000 a plan to allow the province to contract out major surgeries to private, for-profit clinics, he was, predictably, accused of sneaking in "American-style," "pay or pray" health care; his plan to allow patients to pay for "enhanced" services in 2005 met the same outrage, despite getting a green-light from Ottawa. "You mention health care reform and people's hair lights on fire," Mr. Klein lamented."
Yep - Klein and Harris (what the hell: Chaoulli also) were the scapegoats for Ontario's smug Liberals - Liberals who have caused more damage to health care than Harris ever supposedly did! Liberals even attacked their own federal health minister, Pierre Pettigrew...
(see page 18-19: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberal-healthcare-duplicity-ontario.html)
... when he proposed some minor, mild health reforms in the public system, which his Liberals freaked out at, demanding retractions and apologies! And that was pre-Chaoulli, in 2004!
(see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/08/iggy-and-health-reform-are-you-kidding.html)
Ontario Liberal MPP Jim Bradley regularly bashed the American system whenever he could; the deceptive insinuation being that this was the only alternative, and therefore, that his Liberal monopoly was somehow better. Liberals and socialists still try to use that tactic, although being Obama lovers, they now are at a slight loss as to how to kindly bash the U.S. system!
As I wrote in Liberal Healthcare Duplicity...
(see page 35: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberal-healthcare-duplicity-ontario.html)
... "Reactionary Liberal response to healthcare reform is sadly predictable, but not new. Why should the right of the individual become secondary to the fiat of the health-system? And why did Jim Bradley once say he hates doctors?
The St. Catharines Standard (Apr.21, 2001) editorialized on Liberal opposition to health reform as “bombast”, stating:
“The idea that reform is needed is a no-brainer. As currently constructed, Canada’s healthcare system serves as a black hole for public funds”. The Harris government said: “Responsible choices and tough decisions are needed not merely to sustain, but quite literally to save, Canada’s healthcare system”. Yet Jim Bradley pandered: “They’re looking for a way to impose a two-tier healthcare system with a good deal of privatization in it to save money.” The Standard pounced on Bradley’s tactical rhetoric as typical Liberal “fear-mongering”, pointedly noting Bradley’s use of the “Holy Trinity of catch-phrases designed to stifle any attempt at real reform – ‘two tier’, ‘privatization’, and ‘U.S. style’.”
That was in 2001, demonstrating a typical example of state-of-the-art-Liberal-two-tier-anti-American smearmongering. This is the typical kind of Liberal single-payer-pushing, status-quo-protecting garbage that has been regularly spouted in Canada for years. There's never a "debate" - you are instantly demonized when you question single-payer - the left simply anecdotalizes you and demeans you as they did with Shona Holmes.
Let's pretend for a moment that Liberal MPPs such as Jim Bradley had not been arrogant health care monopolists and patient-choice deniers; look at the substantive changes an open-minded Liberal government could have helped bring about, by being honest while in opposition, as well as in government. But, McGuinty's power-hungry Liberals have been duplicitous all along.
Jim Bradley, and the rest of McGuinty's scumbag crew of health care monopolists, have undeniably 'stifled health care reform' in Ontario - for years. Liberal MPPs such as Jim Bradley are directly accountable for what happened to Ontario patients such as Suzanne Aucoin, Shona Holmes, and countless others.
There was always a better way - but Ontario's Liberals, blinded by socialist ideology, chose to ignore reform: by, in a classic Catch-22 style, forcing even more failed health monopolism, since 2003, as a 'solution', when they clearly should have known better.
The taboo third rail should no longer be talk about seriously reforming monopoly heath care; we should also turn to another previously-taboo subject: should monopolist, single-payer-pushing-health-care-cutting politicians be held liable for manslaughter in patient deaths attributed to the failures of their own health care obligations?
If 'single-payer-universality-promising' Liberals want to practice forced-health-care-monopolism in Ontario, why shouldn't these same politicians be criminally held liable in each instance where their monopolism hurts or kills patients?
It's not enough for a smarmy Liberal just to say 'oh well... I had good intentions; the idea of a health monopoly Utopia just sounded SO great...'
“Charlotte Blair doesn't mince words when it comes to the Fraser Health Authority's decision to slash funds that pay for a seniors program she attends five days a week.
"I don't know why they are doing this," the 67-year-old told the Times Thursday. "A lot of people are hurting."
But she saves her toughest words for Chilliwack MLA John Les who has defended the cuts to a program that Fraser Health says isn't directly related to health.
"Oh baloney," Blair said. "I don't believe in that garbage. This is not right. If they close that down, a lot of people are going to go downhill and they are going to die."
On Aug. 5, Fraser Health notified the Chilliwack and District Senior Resources Society they would no longer receive the $77,000 that helps pay for the Time Out seniors day program.
The program is popular with seniors, many of whom would be shut-ins if not for the card-playing, dancing, exercises and outings they participate in.
Society president Al Hunt said this money is an essential part of the $122,000 budget and effectively cancels the Time Out program, which is relied upon directly by about 90 seniors and indirectly by 800 others.
"There are going to be about 90 seniors that have no place to go," Hunt said. "It may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people but to the people participating in the program it's a huge deal. It's the difference between having a life or not."
Hunt said letters were sent out to MLAs Barry Penner and John Les about the cuts. People from both MLAs' offices responded asking what the program was all about, something that baffled Hunt.
"[Les] is not new in town," he said of the former mayor. "The program's been running for 16 years and the City of Chilliwack has been a strong supporter."
Adrian Dix, the NDP health critic, was in Langley Tuesday, challenging Fraser Valley Liberal MLAs to fight for seniors' programs just axed by the regional health authority. Programs were cut in Chilliwack, Langley and White Rock.
"These are the programs that keep people out of acute care," Dix said. He accused the Liberals of hiding the pending cuts during the spring election campaign.
About 150 people showed up to a meeting in Chilliwack on Tuesday morning to protest the cuts.
Blair was there with her son and she said the announcement reduced her to tears, something she didn't want to do in front of her son.
"We're going to fight this as long as we can," she said. "They should leave this open. . . . Some are older than I am; over 80, some are over 90. We need this."
*
Liberals are cutting health care in British Columbia in the same fashion as Liberals are cutting health care in Liberal Liar Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario.
The problem is, they are stoically, unreasonably - possibly criminally - forcing patients to live in their despotic, no-other-choice monopoly WHILE they carry out these cuts. Patients have no other choice - which is why the States become an option for some.
This is right out of the Ontario playbook of Dalton the Liar McGuinty. No wonder Obama said (again) in Montana on Friday that his health care reform is NOT going to resemble Canada’s!
By the way, why aren’t all the smug leftist-single-payer-pushers denouncing Charlotte Blair, the way they are attacking Shona Holmes – who fought and survived Dalton McGuinty’s “cruel game” (as Ontario’s ombudsman called it) of a health monopoly in Liberal Ontario? Blair and Holmes, as well as many other victims of Canadian health monopolism, symbolize just another facet of the same argument: the danger of forced reliance on a state-run health monopoly.
When Blair says: “If they close that down, a lot of people are going to go downhill and they are going to die,” why are leftists not denouncing her as an un-Canadian fearmongerer?! She dared openly criticize the government - ban her! Marginalize her! Brand her a heretic!
We've seen all the numerous smug attacks on Shona Holmes by rabid leftists, who can't bear to see their wet-dream of a socialist single-payer health Utopia discredited by a real-life example of single-payer failure.
Another attack on Shona Holmes was Tarek Fatah's (on co-host Michael Coren's CFRB radio show, Aug.12, 2009) smug dismissal, using the left's favourite, and by now tired, derision of Holmes' experience as "anecdotal". Fatah also accused her, without substantiation, of being paid by the always-nefarious drug companies! Put on the tinfoil hat, Tarek.
Fatah was also disdainful of the Shona Holmes ad played in the U.S., saying something along the line that no one was there to respond; but, the Liberal government had TWO YEARS TO RESPOND, Tarek, publicly, right HERE in Ontario (Liberal MPP Jim Bradley has known about the Shona Holmes case for years!): the Liberals didn't bother to respond! No one cared until the ad made it to the States - suddenly every ignorant Yank single-payer-pusher was an expert on Ontario's monopolist-run health care! Jim Bradley and his Liberals said NOTHING about the Shona Holmes case for two years - and now, if asked, they have the old line ready; 'sorry, we can't comment, as it's before the courts'!
B.C. Liberals, as the Ontario Liberals, are now typically, predictably, cutting health care in their no-patient-choice monopoly...
(see: http://www.bclocalnews.com/surrey_area/aldergrovestar/news/53237182.html;
see: http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5ibrsRY5ML5mrUeWxugcfQgkCLzdA)
... whether patients like it or not.
Your surgery has been cancelled: so what? You're just a goddam "anecdote" as some Yank Obamascare-deluded single-payer-pusher, or a typical Canuck socialist, will declare. How dare you want health care when you need it? We'll decide what you need from what you want, and we'll decide when - or if - you get it! Tommy Douglas said so! [FLICK Tommy Douglas and the horse he rode in on!]
The argument which is not being made, but should be, is that single-payer, non-competitive health monopolism is not the answer to Canada's system of health universality. We need a different, hybrid, private-parallel system, such as in Europe. This kind of system should have been phased-in through all-party agreement in every province years ago. But the political, nationalistic chest-beating always devolves into who is 'more Canadian', who is an 'enemy of Canada', and who will 'save medicare for Tommy Douglas'.
The American system is not a model for us; but neither is the failing model which our monopolist provinces still stubbornly cling to today; a model which still must resort (to its smug supporter's chagrin) to export Canadians to the States for treatment when single-payer monopolism fails to deliver here.
Kevin Libin (in "Private health: our third rail", National Post, Aug.15, 2009; see: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1894803) wrote of Brian Day saying "that that any suggestion of introducing any privatized reform is caricatured into a call to end universal health care forever. "The strategy that proponents of the status quo have used is to present the Canadian public with two options, American or Canadian health care, and at least until Obama came along, anything American was evil," he says. "I don't know a single Canadian physician who would like Canada to have an American-style system." "
As we all know - Ontario's McGuinty Liberals were the poster children for that tactic. It was always deceptive 'American style two tier slippery slope credit card lookit Bush' fearmongering with them! The Liberals regularly perpetuated this caricature, on the federal and provincial level.
Libid writes: "...surveys regularly find that the majority of Canadians are just fine with private insurance, and private hospitals, provided everyone is guaranteed access to health care when they need it. Yet raising the idea is perilous for a politician. When former Alberta premier Ralph Klein announced in 2000 a plan to allow the province to contract out major surgeries to private, for-profit clinics, he was, predictably, accused of sneaking in "American-style," "pay or pray" health care; his plan to allow patients to pay for "enhanced" services in 2005 met the same outrage, despite getting a green-light from Ottawa. "You mention health care reform and people's hair lights on fire," Mr. Klein lamented."
Yep - Klein and Harris (what the hell: Chaoulli also) were the scapegoats for Ontario's smug Liberals - Liberals who have caused more damage to health care than Harris ever supposedly did! Liberals even attacked their own federal health minister, Pierre Pettigrew...
(see page 18-19: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberal-healthcare-duplicity-ontario.html)
... when he proposed some minor, mild health reforms in the public system, which his Liberals freaked out at, demanding retractions and apologies! And that was pre-Chaoulli, in 2004!
(see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/08/iggy-and-health-reform-are-you-kidding.html)
Ontario Liberal MPP Jim Bradley regularly bashed the American system whenever he could; the deceptive insinuation being that this was the only alternative, and therefore, that his Liberal monopoly was somehow better. Liberals and socialists still try to use that tactic, although being Obama lovers, they now are at a slight loss as to how to kindly bash the U.S. system!
As I wrote in Liberal Healthcare Duplicity...
(see page 35: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberal-healthcare-duplicity-ontario.html)
... "Reactionary Liberal response to healthcare reform is sadly predictable, but not new. Why should the right of the individual become secondary to the fiat of the health-system? And why did Jim Bradley once say he hates doctors?
The St. Catharines Standard (Apr.21, 2001) editorialized on Liberal opposition to health reform as “bombast”, stating:
“The idea that reform is needed is a no-brainer. As currently constructed, Canada’s healthcare system serves as a black hole for public funds”. The Harris government said: “Responsible choices and tough decisions are needed not merely to sustain, but quite literally to save, Canada’s healthcare system”. Yet Jim Bradley pandered: “They’re looking for a way to impose a two-tier healthcare system with a good deal of privatization in it to save money.” The Standard pounced on Bradley’s tactical rhetoric as typical Liberal “fear-mongering”, pointedly noting Bradley’s use of the “Holy Trinity of catch-phrases designed to stifle any attempt at real reform – ‘two tier’, ‘privatization’, and ‘U.S. style’.”
That was in 2001, demonstrating a typical example of state-of-the-art-Liberal-two-tier-anti-American smearmongering. This is the typical kind of Liberal single-payer-pushing, status-quo-protecting garbage that has been regularly spouted in Canada for years. There's never a "debate" - you are instantly demonized when you question single-payer - the left simply anecdotalizes you and demeans you as they did with Shona Holmes.
Let's pretend for a moment that Liberal MPPs such as Jim Bradley had not been arrogant health care monopolists and patient-choice deniers; look at the substantive changes an open-minded Liberal government could have helped bring about, by being honest while in opposition, as well as in government. But, McGuinty's power-hungry Liberals have been duplicitous all along.
Jim Bradley, and the rest of McGuinty's scumbag crew of health care monopolists, have undeniably 'stifled health care reform' in Ontario - for years. Liberal MPPs such as Jim Bradley are directly accountable for what happened to Ontario patients such as Suzanne Aucoin, Shona Holmes, and countless others.
There was always a better way - but Ontario's Liberals, blinded by socialist ideology, chose to ignore reform: by, in a classic Catch-22 style, forcing even more failed health monopolism, since 2003, as a 'solution', when they clearly should have known better.
The taboo third rail should no longer be talk about seriously reforming monopoly heath care; we should also turn to another previously-taboo subject: should monopolist, single-payer-pushing-health-care-cutting politicians be held liable for manslaughter in patient deaths attributed to the failures of their own health care obligations?
If 'single-payer-universality-promising' Liberals want to practice forced-health-care-monopolism in Ontario, why shouldn't these same politicians be criminally held liable in each instance where their monopolism hurts or kills patients?
It's not enough for a smarmy Liberal just to say 'oh well... I had good intentions; the idea of a health monopoly Utopia just sounded SO great...'
Friday, August 14, 2009
McGuinty caught in another eHealth lie
On Aug.12, 2009, CBC reported that:
"Premier Dalton McGuinty is denying he intervened in the appointment of Sarah Kramer as the CEO of eHealth Ontario over the objections of some civil servants":
(see: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/08/12/mcguinty-ehealth.html)
But then on Aug.13, 2009, the Globe and Mail reported:
"Premier Dalton McGuinty confirmed he directly intervened to fast-track the hiring of Ms. Kramer, at Dr. Hudson's urging, and called it a "mistake.""
(see: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/mcguinty-faces-new-setback-as-leader-on-wait-times-steps-down/article1251532/)
Whaaa....?!? Looks like Dalton McGuilty is up to his lies again.
Did he or didn't he intervene?
Is he lying now, or was he lying then?
How can anyone know - with McGuinty's Liberals, the truth morphs into evasive revisionism without a moment's hesitation... and then: on to the next deception!
You just can't trust this forked-tongue Liberal reptile to be honest about anything.
Caplan should have been fired months ago - but now this comes out, a day or so after we found out McGuinty lied about ever having the Price Waterhouse eHealth investigation; and then, lied about the reasons for him cancelling it (that the Auditor told him to - which the Auditor denied)
Three days, three lies... and more will surely follow.
And we're supposed to blindly trust that these FLICKING Liberal clowns are competent to manage a state-run health monopoly? This is frightening.
*
"Premier Dalton McGuinty is denying he intervened in the appointment of Sarah Kramer as the CEO of eHealth Ontario over the objections of some civil servants":
(see: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/08/12/mcguinty-ehealth.html)
But then on Aug.13, 2009, the Globe and Mail reported:
"Premier Dalton McGuinty confirmed he directly intervened to fast-track the hiring of Ms. Kramer, at Dr. Hudson's urging, and called it a "mistake.""
(see: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/mcguinty-faces-new-setback-as-leader-on-wait-times-steps-down/article1251532/)
Whaaa....?!? Looks like Dalton McGuilty is up to his lies again.
Did he or didn't he intervene?
Is he lying now, or was he lying then?
How can anyone know - with McGuinty's Liberals, the truth morphs into evasive revisionism without a moment's hesitation... and then: on to the next deception!
You just can't trust this forked-tongue Liberal reptile to be honest about anything.
Caplan should have been fired months ago - but now this comes out, a day or so after we found out McGuinty lied about ever having the Price Waterhouse eHealth investigation; and then, lied about the reasons for him cancelling it (that the Auditor told him to - which the Auditor denied)
Three days, three lies... and more will surely follow.
And we're supposed to blindly trust that these FLICKING Liberal clowns are competent to manage a state-run health monopoly? This is frightening.
*
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Liberal McGuinty lies about secret-agent mission to Mexico
Jim Coyle wrote in "McGuinty's 'little lie' a big concern", (Hamilton Spectator, Aug.12, 2009, see: http://thespec.com/Opinions/article/616698)
"... The premier's office said in his regular weekly itinerary that July 31 was set aside for "private" time. In fact, McGuinty flew to Mexico that day to pitch Toronto's bid for the 2015 Pan American Games.
Four days later, he came clean, announcing that "I travelled to Mexico City at the invitation of President Mario Vazquez Rana of the Pan American Sports Organization to discuss Toronto's bid."
This lie was not, in the great sweep of political history, up there with "I never had sex with that woman." Still, it was an intentional deceit of considerable significance to the Legislative Press Gallery.
Were something untoward to happen to the premier while secretly abroad, and the reporters assigned to cover him weren't even aware of his whereabouts, jobs would be on the line.
More significantly, the scheduling fiction might be suggestive to the public of the creeping arrogance and slipping principles of a second-term administration.
The reason given by the premier's office afterwards for what was not just a sly omission but a conscious falsehood was laughable.
Ontario didn't want to tip Toronto's competitors in the South American capitals of Bogota and Lima to his secret-agent-man mission because the Pan Am bid is so economically important to the GTA.
First, the notion that Dalton McGuinty needs to travel incognito, or in false nose and glasses, lest a media frenzy break out abroad worthy of David Beckham and his Spice Girl is beyond ridiculous. He's hardly George W. Bush flying into Baghdad for Thanksgiving turkey or Bill Clinton doing cloak-and-dagger work with the North Koreans..."
*
Liberal Premier Liar Dalton McGuinty does it once again. Playing fast and loose with the truth; pretending that there's some kind of fictitious 'openness' and 'transparency' in his lying Liberal government.
To say this is "creeping" arrogance is a damn understatement - "intentional deceipt" has become Grit-trademarked Standard Operating Procedure. (see:http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberal-healthcare-duplicity-ontario.html)
McGuinty's secretive Liberal government is the epitome of smug arrogance and duplicitous pretensions.
Liberal McGuinty lied throughout his first campaign and term. Whether they're calculated, deceptive 'white lies' - or, equally as concerning, lies borne of ambitious ignorance - it's not befitting a leader.
The Ontario Liberals' principles have not just "slipped' - they fell out of their collective pants and were left at the side of the road years ago. The joke now is you open a dictionary to the word "liar" and there's Dalton's face. "McGuinty" is now a synonym for "liar"!
Remember how a smarmy McGuinty (trolling for votes in a hospital!!) slithered away from cancer patient Mike Brady after Brady refused to shake the campaigning premier's hand?! (read and see video: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/09/youre-not-helping-me-angry-cancer.html)
It's all about lies, secrecy, and cover-ups now.
St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley certainly knows about that - right, Jim?
"... The premier's office said in his regular weekly itinerary that July 31 was set aside for "private" time. In fact, McGuinty flew to Mexico that day to pitch Toronto's bid for the 2015 Pan American Games.
Four days later, he came clean, announcing that "I travelled to Mexico City at the invitation of President Mario Vazquez Rana of the Pan American Sports Organization to discuss Toronto's bid."
This lie was not, in the great sweep of political history, up there with "I never had sex with that woman." Still, it was an intentional deceit of considerable significance to the Legislative Press Gallery.
Were something untoward to happen to the premier while secretly abroad, and the reporters assigned to cover him weren't even aware of his whereabouts, jobs would be on the line.
More significantly, the scheduling fiction might be suggestive to the public of the creeping arrogance and slipping principles of a second-term administration.
The reason given by the premier's office afterwards for what was not just a sly omission but a conscious falsehood was laughable.
Ontario didn't want to tip Toronto's competitors in the South American capitals of Bogota and Lima to his secret-agent-man mission because the Pan Am bid is so economically important to the GTA.
First, the notion that Dalton McGuinty needs to travel incognito, or in false nose and glasses, lest a media frenzy break out abroad worthy of David Beckham and his Spice Girl is beyond ridiculous. He's hardly George W. Bush flying into Baghdad for Thanksgiving turkey or Bill Clinton doing cloak-and-dagger work with the North Koreans..."
*
Liberal Premier Liar Dalton McGuinty does it once again. Playing fast and loose with the truth; pretending that there's some kind of fictitious 'openness' and 'transparency' in his lying Liberal government.
To say this is "creeping" arrogance is a damn understatement - "intentional deceipt" has become Grit-trademarked Standard Operating Procedure. (see:http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberal-healthcare-duplicity-ontario.html)
McGuinty's secretive Liberal government is the epitome of smug arrogance and duplicitous pretensions.
Liberal McGuinty lied throughout his first campaign and term. Whether they're calculated, deceptive 'white lies' - or, equally as concerning, lies borne of ambitious ignorance - it's not befitting a leader.
The Ontario Liberals' principles have not just "slipped' - they fell out of their collective pants and were left at the side of the road years ago. The joke now is you open a dictionary to the word "liar" and there's Dalton's face. "McGuinty" is now a synonym for "liar"!
Remember how a smarmy McGuinty (trolling for votes in a hospital!!) slithered away from cancer patient Mike Brady after Brady refused to shake the campaigning premier's hand?! (read and see video: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/09/youre-not-helping-me-angry-cancer.html)
It's all about lies, secrecy, and cover-ups now.
St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley certainly knows about that - right, Jim?
Obamascare disinformation
Here's a site with some links (ok... ok... a couple hundred links!) about Obamacare that Democrats might not want you to read:
see http://www.medicalprogresstoday.com/mpt_commentary/
Enjoy. Pass it on. UPDATE: apparently this site link is now not working; it was from the Manhattan Institute, so perhaps it exists somewhere at their site.
*
see http://www.medicalprogresstoday.com/mpt_commentary/
Enjoy. Pass it on. UPDATE: apparently this site link is now not working; it was from the Manhattan Institute, so perhaps it exists somewhere at their site.
*
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Nurses warn of unsafe workload in Niagara ER's; Caplan asked to appoint investigator
Linda Haslam Stroud wrote in “Patients suffer because of NHS inaction” (Aug.12, 2009 St. Catharines Standard):
“Patients visiting the emergency departments of St. Catharines General and/or Greater Niagara General Hospitals are at risk due to the refusal of the Niagara Health System to adequately staff the department with registered nurses.
The Ontario Nurses' Association has been attempting to work with the NHS for a very long time to address this issue that risks the health and well-being of our patients.
The failure of the NHS to adequately staff its St. Catharines ER with RNs became so serious that ONA recently turned to what's called an Independent Assessment Committee. The IAC released a report in April containing 30 recommendations - the most important being to increase RN staffing in the ER.
Yet despite these recommendations, the first action taken by the hospital was to cut more RNs from this busy department.
The RNs left working in the ER face unsafe workloads - they simply cannot be expected to care safely for these patients.
Having exhausted every available option, ONA has officially requested the Minister of Health appoint an investigator under provisions of the Public Hospitals Act.
Should you or your loved one find yourselves in the ER of St. Catharines General or Greater Niagara General, please understand the failure of the NHS to adequately staff them is beyond the control of these hard-working nurses.”
*
Will Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, David Caplan, or Dalton McGuinty bother to publicly respond to the claims made by Haslam Stroud? When will the Liberals respond?
Are RN’s at the St. Catharines and Niagara Falls Emergency Rooms facing workloads great enough to affect and cause danger to patients?
Is it the failure of the NHS to adequately staff the ER – or is it the failure of the Dalton McGuinty Liberal-majority government, along with this government's ideological infatuation with single-payer monopoly health care? McGuinty found billions to bailout General Motors (GM) – but none for adequate ER staff?
We all know if this story had appeared when Good Ole Jim Bradley was in opposition, that a sanctimonious Jim (...aided, abetted, and amplified by an eager, equally-'outraged' local Niagara press..!) would be blabbing up a storm of righteous indignance on the front steps of the hospital.
But now, that Bradley's own Liberals are in a majority government, the St.Catharines Standard Bradley Butt-wiper suddenly can't even bother to get a response for their local Liberal Jim Bradley!!!
Now, Good Ole Liberal Health Care Cutter Jim Bradley has, umm… gone fishin’… yeh, that's it... and won’t answer any questions, as his media friends loyally protect Bradley from scrutiny.
Now, under McGuinty’s incompetent Liberal government, it has reached the point where the ONA has to officially request the Minister of Health to appoint an investigator under provisions in the Public Hospitals Act?
That it has sadly come to this indicates yet another disturbing facet of McGuinty’s slimy Liberal health care duplicity.
What’s next - the appointment - not only of an investigator - but also the appointment of a provincial supervisor to take over the NHS, and the removal of the NHS board? Followed by a full, unfettered-by-Liberal-interference investigation by the ombudsman, the auditor (and the coroner's office, if necessary) into the activities of the NHS and its parent LHIN, topped by a criminal investigation into the Dalton McGuilty government’s handling of their health monopoly’s obligations?
Bring it on.
*
“Patients visiting the emergency departments of St. Catharines General and/or Greater Niagara General Hospitals are at risk due to the refusal of the Niagara Health System to adequately staff the department with registered nurses.
The Ontario Nurses' Association has been attempting to work with the NHS for a very long time to address this issue that risks the health and well-being of our patients.
The failure of the NHS to adequately staff its St. Catharines ER with RNs became so serious that ONA recently turned to what's called an Independent Assessment Committee. The IAC released a report in April containing 30 recommendations - the most important being to increase RN staffing in the ER.
Yet despite these recommendations, the first action taken by the hospital was to cut more RNs from this busy department.
The RNs left working in the ER face unsafe workloads - they simply cannot be expected to care safely for these patients.
Having exhausted every available option, ONA has officially requested the Minister of Health appoint an investigator under provisions of the Public Hospitals Act.
Should you or your loved one find yourselves in the ER of St. Catharines General or Greater Niagara General, please understand the failure of the NHS to adequately staff them is beyond the control of these hard-working nurses.”
*
Will Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, David Caplan, or Dalton McGuinty bother to publicly respond to the claims made by Haslam Stroud? When will the Liberals respond?
Are RN’s at the St. Catharines and Niagara Falls Emergency Rooms facing workloads great enough to affect and cause danger to patients?
Is it the failure of the NHS to adequately staff the ER – or is it the failure of the Dalton McGuinty Liberal-majority government, along with this government's ideological infatuation with single-payer monopoly health care? McGuinty found billions to bailout General Motors (GM) – but none for adequate ER staff?
We all know if this story had appeared when Good Ole Jim Bradley was in opposition, that a sanctimonious Jim (...aided, abetted, and amplified by an eager, equally-'outraged' local Niagara press..!) would be blabbing up a storm of righteous indignance on the front steps of the hospital.
But now, that Bradley's own Liberals are in a majority government, the St.Catharines Standard Bradley Butt-wiper suddenly can't even bother to get a response for their local Liberal Jim Bradley!!!
Now, Good Ole Liberal Health Care Cutter Jim Bradley has, umm… gone fishin’… yeh, that's it... and won’t answer any questions, as his media friends loyally protect Bradley from scrutiny.
Now, under McGuinty’s incompetent Liberal government, it has reached the point where the ONA has to officially request the Minister of Health to appoint an investigator under provisions in the Public Hospitals Act?
That it has sadly come to this indicates yet another disturbing facet of McGuinty’s slimy Liberal health care duplicity.
What’s next - the appointment - not only of an investigator - but also the appointment of a provincial supervisor to take over the NHS, and the removal of the NHS board? Followed by a full, unfettered-by-Liberal-interference investigation by the ombudsman, the auditor (and the coroner's office, if necessary) into the activities of the NHS and its parent LHIN, topped by a criminal investigation into the Dalton McGuilty government’s handling of their health monopoly’s obligations?
Bring it on.
*
Liberals allowed Niagara Health System to deteriorate
Maggie Riopelle wrote in “Councillor fumes over NHS rebuff”, (St. Catharines Standard, Aug.12, 2009):
“Bob Saracino says he's being shut out by the Niagara Health System.
On Monday night, Port Colborne's regional councillor told city councillors he'd been told the NHS will no longer accept his requests for information unless they are funnelled through the mayor's office.
Saracino said he has every right to ask for public information as an elected official and the NHS has no right to refuse his requests.
Saracino claims the problem began about six or eight weeks ago, when NHS CEO and president Debbie Sevenpifer contacted him by telephone. He claimed what prompted the call was that the NHS was upset about his comments in the media.
"She expressed her opinion to me about comments I made in the newspaper about the NHS," he said Tuesday in a phone interview.
"At that time, she indicated
that any requests I make would have to go through the mayor's office."
About two weeks ago, when Saracino asked for statistics on the number of Port Colborne hospital urgent care centre visits, to compare those figures to last year's numbers when the hospital still had an emergency room, he got no response, he said.
After numerous calls, he was sent an e-mail from an NHS staff member informing him staff had been told his requests had to come through Mayor Vance Badawey.
"Who does this woman think she is?" Saracino said of Sevenpifer. "I ain't going through the mayor's office for information from the NHS. This is public information and I am an elected official.
"What does she think this is? The military? Well, we don't wear the same uniform...." he said.
“This is absolute nonsense. There is no way she is going to withhold information. People are asking me questions and they have a right to get answers ... but getting the information is difficult." Saracino called it "unacceptable" and "ridiculous" for Sevenpifer to inform staff to no longer accept a direct request from him. With no disrespect to the mayor, Saracino said, he doesn't intend to follow this new way of doing business.
Asked of his opinion on the matter, Badawey said his focus is on
preserving and enhancing health care in Port Colborne, not on a "battle between two individuals."
"If they want to go at it, by all means knock yourself out," Badawey said.
Sun Media tried to contact the NHS for an interview with Sevenpifer but was told she was in meetings all day. An e-mail was sent as "background information" from Sevenpifer.
"At the time we were getting a number of information requests for statistics related to the conversion of the ER at Port Colborne directed to various staff throughout our organization," the e-mail stated. "Therefore we felt it necessary to develop a streamlined, meaningful way of receiving and responding to information requests."
Sevenpifer said that, through a conversation she had with Saracino a few months ago, she "encouraged" him to "work with the mayor to identify his concerns as well as what information he would like to see."
"In this way, we could address his questions within a co-ordinated means, working with the City of Port Colborne, to identify and report on issues of concern to the community."
The CEO also said that she has had conversations with the mayor and is "committed to work with the City of Port Colborne, as well as our Port Colborne community standing committee to identify and develop key indicators for use as a report card back to the community on the status of the conversion" of the emergency room into an urgent care centre.
Saracino has requested Badawey send a letter inviting Premier Dalton McGuinty to the community so he can see what has happened since that conversion as well as how a role model hospital for rural and small communities "has been destroyed, all because of the incompetence and mismanagement of the NHS."
"I am very disgusted with the NHS," said Saracino. "They have allowed this hospital to deteriorate. I believe the premier can do something about it."”
*
You think McGuinty or any of his Liberal jackbooted goons give a FLICKING shit?!
Liberals don’t want the inconvenience of answering questions!
It was Dalton McGuinty and his LIBERALS who let the NHS "deteriorate"!
The "incompetence and mismanagement" did NOT occur in a vaccuum, free of Liberal single-payer ideological pollution!! Come on!
McGuinty has ALREADY 'done something about it': he allowed it to happen!!
Now you want his help? WTF?
Why doesn’t Saracino ask the local Liberals guilty of running this "disgusting" monopoly: what answers will Kim Craitor or Jim Bradley give? How about the incompetent health minister, David Caplan – will he provide the information Saracino seeks?
Why the secrecy over supposedly-public information? Well - this is just typical customer service in a politically protected monopoly setting. The NHS is simply operating as an agency of the secretive McGuinty Liberal majority government. They do as they’re instructed by the Liberal government. The NHS doesn’t have to talk to nosy councillors; or arm’s-length citizen-taxpayers; or even patients for that matter… they have their own agenda, and they live in a cozy non-competitive monopoly cocoon – the kind of arrogant, unaccountable Liberal-run monopoly which sent brave Ontarians such as Shona Holmes and Suzanne Aucoin to the United States for health care.
Of course - Liberal single-payer, no-patient-choice health care monopolism HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS – right?!!
What choice do patients (or politicians) have, but to go begging to their Local Lying Liberal for mercy, for protection from - Liberal health care duplicity!! (see: here for the whole sad story)
McGuinty's duplicitous Liberals are the health care enemy. Too bad Liberal Badawey wimped out and didn't seem to offer Saracino support - when he now talks about 'preserving and enhancing' health care, obviously he's already had his glass of Liberal Party kool-aid. The solution to Liberal monopolism's failures is more Liberal monopolism, right?
The NHS is just a front for Liberal despotic ideology.
Don't kid yourself - this is the face and the hand of McGuinty's arrogant Liberal government at work here.
The NHS is doing what they were told to do by the likes of Dalton McGuinty, David Caplan, Kim Craitor, and Jim Bradley.
“Bob Saracino says he's being shut out by the Niagara Health System.
On Monday night, Port Colborne's regional councillor told city councillors he'd been told the NHS will no longer accept his requests for information unless they are funnelled through the mayor's office.
Saracino said he has every right to ask for public information as an elected official and the NHS has no right to refuse his requests.
Saracino claims the problem began about six or eight weeks ago, when NHS CEO and president Debbie Sevenpifer contacted him by telephone. He claimed what prompted the call was that the NHS was upset about his comments in the media.
"She expressed her opinion to me about comments I made in the newspaper about the NHS," he said Tuesday in a phone interview.
"At that time, she indicated
that any requests I make would have to go through the mayor's office."
About two weeks ago, when Saracino asked for statistics on the number of Port Colborne hospital urgent care centre visits, to compare those figures to last year's numbers when the hospital still had an emergency room, he got no response, he said.
After numerous calls, he was sent an e-mail from an NHS staff member informing him staff had been told his requests had to come through Mayor Vance Badawey.
"Who does this woman think she is?" Saracino said of Sevenpifer. "I ain't going through the mayor's office for information from the NHS. This is public information and I am an elected official.
"What does she think this is? The military? Well, we don't wear the same uniform...." he said.
“This is absolute nonsense. There is no way she is going to withhold information. People are asking me questions and they have a right to get answers ... but getting the information is difficult." Saracino called it "unacceptable" and "ridiculous" for Sevenpifer to inform staff to no longer accept a direct request from him. With no disrespect to the mayor, Saracino said, he doesn't intend to follow this new way of doing business.
Asked of his opinion on the matter, Badawey said his focus is on
preserving and enhancing health care in Port Colborne, not on a "battle between two individuals."
"If they want to go at it, by all means knock yourself out," Badawey said.
Sun Media tried to contact the NHS for an interview with Sevenpifer but was told she was in meetings all day. An e-mail was sent as "background information" from Sevenpifer.
"At the time we were getting a number of information requests for statistics related to the conversion of the ER at Port Colborne directed to various staff throughout our organization," the e-mail stated. "Therefore we felt it necessary to develop a streamlined, meaningful way of receiving and responding to information requests."
Sevenpifer said that, through a conversation she had with Saracino a few months ago, she "encouraged" him to "work with the mayor to identify his concerns as well as what information he would like to see."
"In this way, we could address his questions within a co-ordinated means, working with the City of Port Colborne, to identify and report on issues of concern to the community."
The CEO also said that she has had conversations with the mayor and is "committed to work with the City of Port Colborne, as well as our Port Colborne community standing committee to identify and develop key indicators for use as a report card back to the community on the status of the conversion" of the emergency room into an urgent care centre.
Saracino has requested Badawey send a letter inviting Premier Dalton McGuinty to the community so he can see what has happened since that conversion as well as how a role model hospital for rural and small communities "has been destroyed, all because of the incompetence and mismanagement of the NHS."
"I am very disgusted with the NHS," said Saracino. "They have allowed this hospital to deteriorate. I believe the premier can do something about it."”
*
You think McGuinty or any of his Liberal jackbooted goons give a FLICKING shit?!
Liberals don’t want the inconvenience of answering questions!
It was Dalton McGuinty and his LIBERALS who let the NHS "deteriorate"!
The "incompetence and mismanagement" did NOT occur in a vaccuum, free of Liberal single-payer ideological pollution!! Come on!
McGuinty has ALREADY 'done something about it': he allowed it to happen!!
Now you want his help? WTF?
Why doesn’t Saracino ask the local Liberals guilty of running this "disgusting" monopoly: what answers will Kim Craitor or Jim Bradley give? How about the incompetent health minister, David Caplan – will he provide the information Saracino seeks?
Why the secrecy over supposedly-public information? Well - this is just typical customer service in a politically protected monopoly setting. The NHS is simply operating as an agency of the secretive McGuinty Liberal majority government. They do as they’re instructed by the Liberal government. The NHS doesn’t have to talk to nosy councillors; or arm’s-length citizen-taxpayers; or even patients for that matter… they have their own agenda, and they live in a cozy non-competitive monopoly cocoon – the kind of arrogant, unaccountable Liberal-run monopoly which sent brave Ontarians such as Shona Holmes and Suzanne Aucoin to the United States for health care.
Of course - Liberal single-payer, no-patient-choice health care monopolism HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS – right?!!
What choice do patients (or politicians) have, but to go begging to their Local Lying Liberal for mercy, for protection from - Liberal health care duplicity!! (see: here for the whole sad story)
McGuinty's duplicitous Liberals are the health care enemy. Too bad Liberal Badawey wimped out and didn't seem to offer Saracino support - when he now talks about 'preserving and enhancing' health care, obviously he's already had his glass of Liberal Party kool-aid. The solution to Liberal monopolism's failures is more Liberal monopolism, right?
The NHS is just a front for Liberal despotic ideology.
Don't kid yourself - this is the face and the hand of McGuinty's arrogant Liberal government at work here.
The NHS is doing what they were told to do by the likes of Dalton McGuinty, David Caplan, Kim Craitor, and Jim Bradley.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Putting lipstick on the Obamacare pig
In a Sharon Lem’s report “Nursing a grievance” (Sun Media, Aug.10, 2009), Ontario Liberal Health Minister David Caplan is quoted saying: "Today, 800,000 Ontarians who didn't have a family health-care provider in 2003, have one. We have lowered wait times for key surgeries and set ambitious emergency room wait time target."
Setting ambitious targets is not the same thing as actually meeting real targets, Mr. DaCap. And, access to a health care waiting list – courtesy of your Liberal-run health monopoly – is not the same thing as actual health CARE. This is an incompetent Liberal spouting bullshit in the hopes that someone believes him. Hey, BTW, DaCap; the eHealth scandal is NOT an “ALLEGATION” -it's a FACT!
Funny, though, how DaCap can't cite how many Ontarians his Liberal government sent to the United States for healthcare since 2003!!
Interesting to see Obama's references to Canada's health care system in Andrew Mayeda's report, "Obama plays down Buy U.S. policies" (National Post, Aug11, 2009):
"Barack Obama, the U. S. President, yesterday downplayed the threat to Canadians posed by Buy American policies while rejecting the notion Canada should be seen as a health-care "bogeyman."
The Buy American policy, which requires U. S. suppliers use American-made materials in economic-recovery projects, has cast a chill over Canadian exporters and provoked fears of U. S. protectionism.
But as he wrapped up a summit here yesterday with Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, and Felipe Calderon, the Mexican President, Mr. Obama called for cooler heads.
"It's important to keep it in perspective that, in fact, we have not seen some sweeping steps towards protectionism," he said at the close of the two-day summit.
He noted the Buy American policy has so far only been put into law in his US$787-billion stimulus bill, although other legislation working its way through Congress contains similar provisions. He also said the policy does not run afoul of his country's obligations as a member of the World Trade Organization.
Meanwhile, the President tried to defuse controversy over the portrayal of Canada's public health-care system by opponents of his administration's health reforms.
In a recent television commercial sponsored by a conservative U. S. lobby group, an Ontario woman describes how she travelled to an Arizona clinic for brain surgery because of long wait times in her home province.
"I suspect that you Canadians will continue to get dragged in by those who oppose reform, even though I've said nothing about Canadian health care," the President said.
"I don't find Canadians particularly scary, but I guess some of the opponents of reform think they make a good boogeyman."
Mr. Obama has been pushing Congress to pass a healthcare reform bill that would require all Americans to obtain health insurance.
However, the President emphasized that the new model that emerges will be "uniquely American."
"I said that the Canadian model works for Canada, it would not work for the United States. In part, simply because we've evolved differently," he said.
Mr. Harper, who lambasted the Canadian public healthcare system before becoming prime minister, steered clear of the issue,
"As you know, Canadians support their health-care system. As for the rest of this question, my only answer is that this is an American debate, and a responsibility of the provinces."
On the Buy American front, he said he was "happy" to see the provinces and territories pledge last week to support the federal government's efforts to fight protectionism.
The premiers backed the concept of a procurement agreement with the United States in which the provinces would agree not to retaliate in exchange for an exemption from Washington.
But Mr. Harper also made it clear negotiations with the Americans are still under way, suggesting the next opportunity for a breakthrough could come when he makes his first official visit to the Obama White House on Sept. 16.
"Our respective trade ministers have been talking, officials are talking, and I anticipate that President Obama and I will be discussing this at greater length in our upcoming meetings," the Prime Minister said."
*
When Obama tells us what he thinks we should "keep in perspective", we should remember that Obama already threatened to "hammer" Canada over NAFTA during the Ohio primaries, when he also said "I don't think NAFTA has been good for America -and I never have."
(see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2008/02/dangerous-us-democrats-want-to-hammer.html; see:http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2008/02/obama-blames-canada-and-nafta-for-ohio.html)
When it comes to health care, Canadians do indeed 'Buy American': we have to, because healthcare is often unavailable when needed in our single-payer provinces. Let's 'hope' that Obama doesn't 'change' this for the worse.
Obama would be disingenuous if he blithely ignored what single-payer has done in Canada - and if he blithely ignored that many in his Democrat party STILL shill for Canadian-style single-payer!
Many ignorant Americans don't even believe that Canadians are sent from our single-payer Utopia to the U.S. for treatment that can't be found at home. Are these people -real victims of failed single-payer ideology - 'boogeymen' to Democrats; to be marginalized, demonized, disparaged, and dismissed?
Obama says he 'doesn't find Canadians particularly scary' - what's that supposed to mean? Why should he find us scary? It's our single-payer monopolism which IS scary - and many Canadians are seeking "health care reform" here too: Obama doesn't have a monopoly on that concept.
Shona Holmes' case symbolizes what many DON'T WANT in Canada -no-choice, single-payer, state-run, unaccountable health monopolism. We need competition, not single-payer monopolism, and we are seeking reforms towards a hybrid-private parallel system. Obama is being coy when he claims our single-payer model works. Chaoulli affirmed it didn't in Quebec. And Holmes is up next in Ontario.
Many Canadians - those same ones, by the way, who also love to smugly deride Americans as scary, are frankly shocked at Obama's claim that he isn't emulating their own supposedly-superior system! What an affront!
As to Obama's claims that he's going to come up with something that's "uniquely American", we'll just have to wait and see; it might be that this 'something unique' turns out to be a wasted-opportunity version of single-payer-in-disguise... or... 'Putting lipstick on pig', as Obama once said.
Here's an article ("High Priced Pain: What To Expect From a Single Payer Health Care System", by Kevin C. Fleming, written Sept.22, 2006 and still relevant today) which single-payer-pushing Demotards will not enjoy reading:
http://www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/bg1973.cfm
Feel free to deride Fleming and Shona Holmes, while kissing Tommy Douglas's dead socialist ass.
Setting ambitious targets is not the same thing as actually meeting real targets, Mr. DaCap. And, access to a health care waiting list – courtesy of your Liberal-run health monopoly – is not the same thing as actual health CARE. This is an incompetent Liberal spouting bullshit in the hopes that someone believes him. Hey, BTW, DaCap; the eHealth scandal is NOT an “ALLEGATION” -it's a FACT!
Funny, though, how DaCap can't cite how many Ontarians his Liberal government sent to the United States for healthcare since 2003!!
Interesting to see Obama's references to Canada's health care system in Andrew Mayeda's report, "Obama plays down Buy U.S. policies" (National Post, Aug11, 2009):
"Barack Obama, the U. S. President, yesterday downplayed the threat to Canadians posed by Buy American policies while rejecting the notion Canada should be seen as a health-care "bogeyman."
The Buy American policy, which requires U. S. suppliers use American-made materials in economic-recovery projects, has cast a chill over Canadian exporters and provoked fears of U. S. protectionism.
But as he wrapped up a summit here yesterday with Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, and Felipe Calderon, the Mexican President, Mr. Obama called for cooler heads.
"It's important to keep it in perspective that, in fact, we have not seen some sweeping steps towards protectionism," he said at the close of the two-day summit.
He noted the Buy American policy has so far only been put into law in his US$787-billion stimulus bill, although other legislation working its way through Congress contains similar provisions. He also said the policy does not run afoul of his country's obligations as a member of the World Trade Organization.
Meanwhile, the President tried to defuse controversy over the portrayal of Canada's public health-care system by opponents of his administration's health reforms.
In a recent television commercial sponsored by a conservative U. S. lobby group, an Ontario woman describes how she travelled to an Arizona clinic for brain surgery because of long wait times in her home province.
"I suspect that you Canadians will continue to get dragged in by those who oppose reform, even though I've said nothing about Canadian health care," the President said.
"I don't find Canadians particularly scary, but I guess some of the opponents of reform think they make a good boogeyman."
Mr. Obama has been pushing Congress to pass a healthcare reform bill that would require all Americans to obtain health insurance.
However, the President emphasized that the new model that emerges will be "uniquely American."
"I said that the Canadian model works for Canada, it would not work for the United States. In part, simply because we've evolved differently," he said.
Mr. Harper, who lambasted the Canadian public healthcare system before becoming prime minister, steered clear of the issue,
"As you know, Canadians support their health-care system. As for the rest of this question, my only answer is that this is an American debate, and a responsibility of the provinces."
On the Buy American front, he said he was "happy" to see the provinces and territories pledge last week to support the federal government's efforts to fight protectionism.
The premiers backed the concept of a procurement agreement with the United States in which the provinces would agree not to retaliate in exchange for an exemption from Washington.
But Mr. Harper also made it clear negotiations with the Americans are still under way, suggesting the next opportunity for a breakthrough could come when he makes his first official visit to the Obama White House on Sept. 16.
"Our respective trade ministers have been talking, officials are talking, and I anticipate that President Obama and I will be discussing this at greater length in our upcoming meetings," the Prime Minister said."
*
When Obama tells us what he thinks we should "keep in perspective", we should remember that Obama already threatened to "hammer" Canada over NAFTA during the Ohio primaries, when he also said "I don't think NAFTA has been good for America -and I never have."
(see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2008/02/dangerous-us-democrats-want-to-hammer.html; see:http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2008/02/obama-blames-canada-and-nafta-for-ohio.html)
When it comes to health care, Canadians do indeed 'Buy American': we have to, because healthcare is often unavailable when needed in our single-payer provinces. Let's 'hope' that Obama doesn't 'change' this for the worse.
Obama would be disingenuous if he blithely ignored what single-payer has done in Canada - and if he blithely ignored that many in his Democrat party STILL shill for Canadian-style single-payer!
Many ignorant Americans don't even believe that Canadians are sent from our single-payer Utopia to the U.S. for treatment that can't be found at home. Are these people -real victims of failed single-payer ideology - 'boogeymen' to Democrats; to be marginalized, demonized, disparaged, and dismissed?
Obama says he 'doesn't find Canadians particularly scary' - what's that supposed to mean? Why should he find us scary? It's our single-payer monopolism which IS scary - and many Canadians are seeking "health care reform" here too: Obama doesn't have a monopoly on that concept.
Shona Holmes' case symbolizes what many DON'T WANT in Canada -no-choice, single-payer, state-run, unaccountable health monopolism. We need competition, not single-payer monopolism, and we are seeking reforms towards a hybrid-private parallel system. Obama is being coy when he claims our single-payer model works. Chaoulli affirmed it didn't in Quebec. And Holmes is up next in Ontario.
Many Canadians - those same ones, by the way, who also love to smugly deride Americans as scary, are frankly shocked at Obama's claim that he isn't emulating their own supposedly-superior system! What an affront!
As to Obama's claims that he's going to come up with something that's "uniquely American", we'll just have to wait and see; it might be that this 'something unique' turns out to be a wasted-opportunity version of single-payer-in-disguise... or... 'Putting lipstick on pig', as Obama once said.
Here's an article ("High Priced Pain: What To Expect From a Single Payer Health Care System", by Kevin C. Fleming, written Sept.22, 2006 and still relevant today) which single-payer-pushing Demotards will not enjoy reading:
http://www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/bg1973.cfm
Feel free to deride Fleming and Shona Holmes, while kissing Tommy Douglas's dead socialist ass.
Liar McGuinty cancels promised eHealth inquiry
Keith Leslie wrote in “Scandal-plagued eHealth gets third CEO in 3 months, fourth by end of year”, (Canadian Press, Aug.11, 2009):
“The opposition parties accused the Liberal government of incompetence Tuesday after eHealth Ontario named its third chief executive officer in as many months, with a fourth to be appointed before the end of this year.
The government can play musical chairs with the CEOs all it wants, but the bottom line is Health Minister David Caplan should be fired, said Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak.
"It's either incompetence or neglect, neither of which is excusable when it comes to scarce health dollars," said Hudak. "We need a new minister to come in there and clean up this mess."
The New Democrats repeated their call for Caplan's resignation, and said rotating through CEOs only creates uncertainty at eHealth and detracts from its mandate to develop electronic health records.
"It shows the government in a scramble and they're trying to plug a leaking dike, but the whole eHealth situation is one the government has fumbled very, very badly," said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
"To put yet another interim person in place just shows they really have no idea how to get themselves out of this mess and how to get eHealth back on track."
Former eHealth CEO Sarah Kramer and former board chair Dr. Alan Hudson both resigned in June after the Conservatives and New Democrats complained the agency gave out $5 million in untendered contracts to consulting companies.
Documents released by the government last week showed the value of those untendered contracts was closer to $16 million, with the biggest ones going to companies the opposition parties say have ties to the Liberal government.
EHealth's board of directors announced Tuesday it had appointed Toronto East General CEO Robert Devitt as the new interim president and chief executive officer of the provincial agency.
However, Devitt's appointment will end on December 31, 2009, and in the meantime, eHealth's board will search for a permanent CEO. Ron Sapsford, who had been acting CEO of eHealth since Kramer's resignation, will return to his role as a deputy minister of Health.
Provincial Auditor General James McCarter will report on his investigation of eHealth in September, but the opposition parties are still angry with the Liberals for quietly cancelling an outside review by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which McGuinty had promised in June.
"It's true, we did say that we thought there should be an independent, third-party review by PriceWaterhouse, and at the time we did know as well that the auditor was going to conduct his own independent review," McGuinty admitted Tuesday.
"Since that time, the auditor has approached us and said, 'You've got to stop the PriceWaterhouse thing, it is excessive, I'll be doing that work anyway."'
However, the June 29 letter from the auditor general to the eHealth board merely pointed out that his efforts would duplicate the work of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and did not recommend the outside review be cancelled as McGuinty claimed.
"Clearly, the decision to engage PWC is the board's and the minister's to make," McCarter wrote in the letter as he also pledged to co-operate with PriceWaterhouseCoopers on their review of eHealth.
EHealth was set up last year to create electronic health records after the first provincial agency given that task, Smart Systems for Health, spent $650 million but failed to produce anything of lasting value before it was quietly shut down last September.
Ontario lags behind most other provinces and many U.S. states when it comes to electronic health records, which the opposition parties agree are very important. But they say the spending scandal will make it even harder for Ontario to catch up.
"Instead of electronic health records, the focus has been on trying to clean up the mess (at eHealth), and it really doesn't give people a lot of confidence," said Horwath.
"You mention the word eHealth anywhere in Ontario and people just shake their head in disgust."
The eHealth scandal "is creating an entire crisis of confidence in electronic health records in our province," warned Hudak.
"What had been a good idea has turned into a scandal of spending abuses, and now a clear example of mismanagement with three CEOs in three months," he said.”
*
Disgusting, disingenuous liar Dalton McGuinty is at it once again, peddling his smarmy Liberal Healthcare Duplicity. (see:http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberal-healthcare-duplicity-ontario.html)
It’s come to the point where you just can’t believe anything McGuinty or any of his Lying Grits have to say.
McGuinty's Liberals promised an independent inquiry into their eHealth scandal – and remember... this was only AFTER they were caught! (As Antonella Artuso and Jonathan Jenkins wrote in "Liberals on defensive over eHealth scandal", (Niagara Falls Review, Jun.5, 2009): "Another external review of eHealth by PriceWaterhouse-Coopers -- overseen by a ministry of health auditor -- is expected in July.")
Now a slimy McGuinty backpedals, alleging that the Auditor told the Premier of Ontario: ‘You've got to stop the Price Waterhouse thing, it is excessive, I'll be doing that work anyway.’
But it was McGuinty – the Premier Liberal Liar of Ontario – who made the promise, then decided to walk away from it, hoping no-one would notice – and when we did notice, the Lousy Lying Liberal Scumbag blames someone else for making him cancel his own promised investigation!
You want Liberal health care accountability? You want transparency? You want openness in government? You won’t find it in Dalton McGuinty’s ideological single-payer monopoly. All the Liberals do is hide from scrutiny - just look at secretive MPP Jim Bradley: (http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/06/obstructionist-liberal-mpp-jim-bradley.html)!
The Liberals try to avoid, cover-up, postpone, or control, any attempts at investigation of their role in mismanaging their health care monopoly.
The point is that McGuinty and his Liberals have done FLICK all about McCarter’s previous reports (see:http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/12/ontario-liberals-cant-measure-hospital.html) which lambasted McGuinty’s handling of his health monopoly. McGuinty and his lying Liberals can ignore any reports they so choose – be it coroner, auditor or ombudsman.
McGuinty should have fired Caplan... (see:http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/06/caplan-rewarded-for-liberal-ehealth.html) ...as soon as the Liberal government's eHealth scandal was revealed. McGuinty lied to Ontarians when he told us then, that the 'buck stops' with him; and now: we see McGuinty has lied... (see:http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/05/liberals-lies-and-health-care-shuffle.html) ... AGAIN!
Typical Liberals.
“The opposition parties accused the Liberal government of incompetence Tuesday after eHealth Ontario named its third chief executive officer in as many months, with a fourth to be appointed before the end of this year.
The government can play musical chairs with the CEOs all it wants, but the bottom line is Health Minister David Caplan should be fired, said Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak.
"It's either incompetence or neglect, neither of which is excusable when it comes to scarce health dollars," said Hudak. "We need a new minister to come in there and clean up this mess."
The New Democrats repeated their call for Caplan's resignation, and said rotating through CEOs only creates uncertainty at eHealth and detracts from its mandate to develop electronic health records.
"It shows the government in a scramble and they're trying to plug a leaking dike, but the whole eHealth situation is one the government has fumbled very, very badly," said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
"To put yet another interim person in place just shows they really have no idea how to get themselves out of this mess and how to get eHealth back on track."
Former eHealth CEO Sarah Kramer and former board chair Dr. Alan Hudson both resigned in June after the Conservatives and New Democrats complained the agency gave out $5 million in untendered contracts to consulting companies.
Documents released by the government last week showed the value of those untendered contracts was closer to $16 million, with the biggest ones going to companies the opposition parties say have ties to the Liberal government.
EHealth's board of directors announced Tuesday it had appointed Toronto East General CEO Robert Devitt as the new interim president and chief executive officer of the provincial agency.
However, Devitt's appointment will end on December 31, 2009, and in the meantime, eHealth's board will search for a permanent CEO. Ron Sapsford, who had been acting CEO of eHealth since Kramer's resignation, will return to his role as a deputy minister of Health.
Provincial Auditor General James McCarter will report on his investigation of eHealth in September, but the opposition parties are still angry with the Liberals for quietly cancelling an outside review by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which McGuinty had promised in June.
"It's true, we did say that we thought there should be an independent, third-party review by PriceWaterhouse, and at the time we did know as well that the auditor was going to conduct his own independent review," McGuinty admitted Tuesday.
"Since that time, the auditor has approached us and said, 'You've got to stop the PriceWaterhouse thing, it is excessive, I'll be doing that work anyway."'
However, the June 29 letter from the auditor general to the eHealth board merely pointed out that his efforts would duplicate the work of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and did not recommend the outside review be cancelled as McGuinty claimed.
"Clearly, the decision to engage PWC is the board's and the minister's to make," McCarter wrote in the letter as he also pledged to co-operate with PriceWaterhouseCoopers on their review of eHealth.
EHealth was set up last year to create electronic health records after the first provincial agency given that task, Smart Systems for Health, spent $650 million but failed to produce anything of lasting value before it was quietly shut down last September.
Ontario lags behind most other provinces and many U.S. states when it comes to electronic health records, which the opposition parties agree are very important. But they say the spending scandal will make it even harder for Ontario to catch up.
"Instead of electronic health records, the focus has been on trying to clean up the mess (at eHealth), and it really doesn't give people a lot of confidence," said Horwath.
"You mention the word eHealth anywhere in Ontario and people just shake their head in disgust."
The eHealth scandal "is creating an entire crisis of confidence in electronic health records in our province," warned Hudak.
"What had been a good idea has turned into a scandal of spending abuses, and now a clear example of mismanagement with three CEOs in three months," he said.”
*
Disgusting, disingenuous liar Dalton McGuinty is at it once again, peddling his smarmy Liberal Healthcare Duplicity. (see:http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberal-healthcare-duplicity-ontario.html)
It’s come to the point where you just can’t believe anything McGuinty or any of his Lying Grits have to say.
McGuinty's Liberals promised an independent inquiry into their eHealth scandal – and remember... this was only AFTER they were caught! (As Antonella Artuso and Jonathan Jenkins wrote in "Liberals on defensive over eHealth scandal", (Niagara Falls Review, Jun.5, 2009): "Another external review of eHealth by PriceWaterhouse-Coopers -- overseen by a ministry of health auditor -- is expected in July.")
Now a slimy McGuinty backpedals, alleging that the Auditor told the Premier of Ontario: ‘You've got to stop the Price Waterhouse thing, it is excessive, I'll be doing that work anyway.’
But it was McGuinty – the Premier Liberal Liar of Ontario – who made the promise, then decided to walk away from it, hoping no-one would notice – and when we did notice, the Lousy Lying Liberal Scumbag blames someone else for making him cancel his own promised investigation!
You want Liberal health care accountability? You want transparency? You want openness in government? You won’t find it in Dalton McGuinty’s ideological single-payer monopoly. All the Liberals do is hide from scrutiny - just look at secretive MPP Jim Bradley: (http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/06/obstructionist-liberal-mpp-jim-bradley.html)!
The Liberals try to avoid, cover-up, postpone, or control, any attempts at investigation of their role in mismanaging their health care monopoly.
The point is that McGuinty and his Liberals have done FLICK all about McCarter’s previous reports (see:http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/12/ontario-liberals-cant-measure-hospital.html) which lambasted McGuinty’s handling of his health monopoly. McGuinty and his lying Liberals can ignore any reports they so choose – be it coroner, auditor or ombudsman.
McGuinty should have fired Caplan... (see:http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/06/caplan-rewarded-for-liberal-ehealth.html) ...as soon as the Liberal government's eHealth scandal was revealed. McGuinty lied to Ontarians when he told us then, that the 'buck stops' with him; and now: we see McGuinty has lied... (see:http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/05/liberals-lies-and-health-care-shuffle.html) ... AGAIN!
Typical Liberals.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Child drowning victim rushed to Buffalo from Ontario
Alison Langley wrote in "Boy, 4, dies after falling into pool", (St. Catharines Standard, Aug.10, 2009):
"A four-year-old boy has died after falling into his family's backyard swimming pool in Fort Erie Saturday.
Niagara Regional Police say emergency crews were called to a Garrison Road home around 7 p. m. after receiving a 911 call that a child had been pulled from a pool with no vital signs.
The child was taken to Douglas Memorial Hospital, but officials quickly determined he needed to be transferred to another hospital - Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo.
U. S. Customs and Border Protection, together with the Peace Bridge Authority, temporarily closed the Peace Bridge to allow the ambulance clear access across the span. "There was no need for passports, no stopping at all, they went right over," NRP acting Staff Sgt. Wayne Genders said.
At the other side of the bridge, members of the Buffalo Police Department and Erie County Sheriff's Office were waiting to escort the ambulance to the hospital. "Every intersection from the bridge to the hospital was closed," Genders said.
Despite the efforts of emergency crews, the boy succumbed to his injuries Sunday afternoon. His name has not been released.
Genders said he is grateful to all of the agencies involved for their co-operation and assistance in this "tragic event."
The Fort Erie Fire Department and Canada Border Services Agency also assisted in the effort to get the boy to hospital.
While passports or other approved documents are now required in order to cross the border, U. S. border officials say those requirements can be set aside during medical emergencies."
*
In this tragic situation, at least thankfully the American health care system was able to take in the boy, when Ontario's Liberal health monopoly - once again - couldn't provide necessary and timely treatment.
Why was this Ontario patient taken to a hospital in Buffalo, N.Y.?
What was available across the Niagara River in Buffalo, which couldn't be provided here in McGuinty's Ontario health monopoly? Why are so many patients being sent to the States - and why aren't St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, or Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor, or Ontario Health Minister David Caplan, answering these questions?
Is anyone even bothering to ask?!
Why are these all-too-frequent situations of Canadians being transported to the States for health care being trivialized, dismissed, and marginalized by certain groups - on both sides of the border? Is the export of patients from Ontario to the U.S. a systemic response within Ontario's monopoly, or should this be filed under the convenient heading of "oh, this is just an anecdote; it's just a one-off kind of thing; this is just an exception-to-the-rule situation; don't worry about it"?
Will the ombudsman or the coroner look into these cases of patients being exported to the U.S. for treatment that is unavailable in Ontario, to see why this pattern is emerging in Ontario?
Dalton McGuinty's tax-and-spend Liberal government lies to Ontarians with propaganda as to how good Ontario's single-payer health monopoly supposedly is; yet, mysteriously, the Liberals can't provide health care in Ontario to those who suddenly need it.
Why? Who is explaining what is happening in Ontario with health care - why some patients are sent to the States, while others aren't? What needs to be done?
Ontario's Liberals send patients to the same hospitals in the same American system which they smugly LOVE TO DENIGRATE. (eh, Jim Bradley?)
Who is asking these secretive Liberals to explain themselves?
Certainly not anybody at the St.Catharines Standard's Jim Bradley Booster Club, that's for sure.
*
"A four-year-old boy has died after falling into his family's backyard swimming pool in Fort Erie Saturday.
Niagara Regional Police say emergency crews were called to a Garrison Road home around 7 p. m. after receiving a 911 call that a child had been pulled from a pool with no vital signs.
The child was taken to Douglas Memorial Hospital, but officials quickly determined he needed to be transferred to another hospital - Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo.
U. S. Customs and Border Protection, together with the Peace Bridge Authority, temporarily closed the Peace Bridge to allow the ambulance clear access across the span. "There was no need for passports, no stopping at all, they went right over," NRP acting Staff Sgt. Wayne Genders said.
At the other side of the bridge, members of the Buffalo Police Department and Erie County Sheriff's Office were waiting to escort the ambulance to the hospital. "Every intersection from the bridge to the hospital was closed," Genders said.
Despite the efforts of emergency crews, the boy succumbed to his injuries Sunday afternoon. His name has not been released.
Genders said he is grateful to all of the agencies involved for their co-operation and assistance in this "tragic event."
The Fort Erie Fire Department and Canada Border Services Agency also assisted in the effort to get the boy to hospital.
While passports or other approved documents are now required in order to cross the border, U. S. border officials say those requirements can be set aside during medical emergencies."
*
In this tragic situation, at least thankfully the American health care system was able to take in the boy, when Ontario's Liberal health monopoly - once again - couldn't provide necessary and timely treatment.
Why was this Ontario patient taken to a hospital in Buffalo, N.Y.?
What was available across the Niagara River in Buffalo, which couldn't be provided here in McGuinty's Ontario health monopoly? Why are so many patients being sent to the States - and why aren't St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, or Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor, or Ontario Health Minister David Caplan, answering these questions?
Is anyone even bothering to ask?!
Why are these all-too-frequent situations of Canadians being transported to the States for health care being trivialized, dismissed, and marginalized by certain groups - on both sides of the border? Is the export of patients from Ontario to the U.S. a systemic response within Ontario's monopoly, or should this be filed under the convenient heading of "oh, this is just an anecdote; it's just a one-off kind of thing; this is just an exception-to-the-rule situation; don't worry about it"?
Will the ombudsman or the coroner look into these cases of patients being exported to the U.S. for treatment that is unavailable in Ontario, to see why this pattern is emerging in Ontario?
Dalton McGuinty's tax-and-spend Liberal government lies to Ontarians with propaganda as to how good Ontario's single-payer health monopoly supposedly is; yet, mysteriously, the Liberals can't provide health care in Ontario to those who suddenly need it.
Why? Who is explaining what is happening in Ontario with health care - why some patients are sent to the States, while others aren't? What needs to be done?
Ontario's Liberals send patients to the same hospitals in the same American system which they smugly LOVE TO DENIGRATE. (eh, Jim Bradley?)
Who is asking these secretive Liberals to explain themselves?
Certainly not anybody at the St.Catharines Standard's Jim Bradley Booster Club, that's for sure.
*
Dalton McGuinty's "secret agenda"!
Randall Denley wrote in "Our health system broken, but few care", Windsor Star, Aug.7, 2009):
"Dr. Robert Ouellet and U.S. President Barack Obama have something in common.
Both are urging fundamental reform in the way their countries approach health care, and both are getting strong resistance from those who favour the status quo.
The president of the Canadian Medical Association has spent most of the last year trying to interject some common sense into Canadian health care. Unfortunately, Canadians prefer to keep plugging along just as they have in the past, despite mounting evidence that our system is inefficient and doesn't serve patients nearly as well as it should for the money we spend.
Two recent reports make that important point. The latest health statistics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development show that Canada was the fifth-highest spender among the 31 countries assessed in 2007. Despite that, we have below-average numbers of doctors, nurses, acute care hospital beds, CT scanners and MRIs. Another study, the Euro-Canada Health Consumer Index, looked at a wide variety of healthcare statistics from 32 countries and tried to assess "bang for the buck" in each national healthcare system.
Canada finished last.
The two think-tanks responsible for the study don't claim that their methodology is perfect, but the conclusion is clear: Canada can do a lot better for the money it is spending.
That's the point that Ouellet has been trying to drive home, and he has some ideas about how we can do it. His central message is that we should have a patient-centred system. "If the healthcare system is not centred on the patient, who is it centred on?" he asks.
Consider the never-changing list of intractable Canadian healthcare problems: We have long wait times for a wide variety of medical services. Our emergency room rooms are clogged. Our hospital beds are often filled with people who should be getting long-term care instead.
We are not the only country to have these problems, but others have found solutions.
Ouellet has visited England, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and France to study their systems. All offer universal access, as does Canada. In England, he found that teams of doctors, nurses and hospital administrators had worked to streamline emergency room procedures, and there is now a four-hour wait time benchmark.
Hospital funding in Britain has been changed so that they are paid for the services they provide.
In Canada, our hospitals get a global budget that reflects the increase the government is prepared to pay, combined with a guess at service volume. Every patient the hospital sees drains that budget, leading to the dreaded deficit and the predictable annual scolding from government. In the British system, patients bring the hospital revenue, so there is an incentive to treat more of them, not fewer. That sounds costly, but it is balanced by tough efficiency targets.
In Denmark, long-term care is a municipal responsibility and if there is no space, the municipality has to pay the hospital. That provides an incentive to provide long-term care homes. In Canada, one government pays either way, so there isn't much incentive.
Denmark also has a safety valve for cancer patients. If they can't get treatment within one month, they are allowed to go to a private clinic and the government health system pays.
The idea of an alternative to the current monopoly on most major forms of health care is critical to the idea of a patient-first system, Ouellet argues. Without it, there is no real pressure for government health care to deliver timely results and no alternative for patients when it doesn't. Ouellet himself is a radiologist who runs a private clinic in Quebec providing service to those whose health benefits will cover it.
Ouellet's point makes sense, but as soon as the words "private health care" are mentioned in Canada, we launch into comparisons with the American system, surely the most costly and least efficient in the world. Our universal healthcare system is held up as a Canadian value, as if we were the only ones who had it.
It's an irrational way to see the situation. There is already a substantial private sector involvement here in things such as diagnostic testing, and that's not an issue. When we use our supplementary medical benefits to pay for an eye exam, prescription drugs or physiotherapy, we are all using private medicine. These are things government provides in limited supply or not at all. Should we ban these extras?
As Ouellet envisions it, a somewhat expanded private sector would not be a parallel system drawing away doctors from public health care, but rather an opportunity for doctors to do supplementary work without restrictions on their operating time or long waits for diagnostic tests. The bulk of any physician's billing would still be in the public system.
Ouellet reports that health ministers have been listening to what he has to say, although there is limited action so far. When government does act, it is usually to throw more money at the problem and hope that it will resolve itself. As the international studies show, Canada's problem is not a lack of money in the system, it's a lack of thinking about how we spend it. We should start by being more open-minded, and by considering how countries very much like our own have dealt with the same problems."
*
Look how open minded Ontario's Tax-and-Spend Liberals are - Greg Sorbara raised a new health tax after Liberals lied they wouldn't raise taxes; Dalton McGuinty and MPP Liberal Jim Bradley ran on their patented fearmongering allegations about 'Harris and two tier' - then, once elected, George Smitherman cut health care - while Liberals raised billions in new health taxes.
McGuinty dumps money into a health system which Smitherman claimed 'we didn't even have'.
As for health care, the focus, as far as any Liberal is concerned, is not on the patient - it's on maintaining the Liberals' duplicitous political status-quo as supposed-defenders of some kind of storied Tommy Douglasonian vision, regardless of how harmful or inefficient that Utopian ideal may be. (The federal Liberals' sanctimonious reaction to Pierre Pettigrew's mild reform ideas is a classic example.)
Remember how McGuinty fearmongered back in Apr.27, 2001, in the Toronto Star: "We've been saying for some time now that Mike Harris has a secret agenda to promote two-tier health care in Ontario and now the secret is out" when Harris touched on similar ideas that Ouellet is now trying to discuss. Look how much time has been lost and wasted since. Years later, the Chaoulli decision came in Quebec, yet McGuinty's ideologues still did nothing to phase in patient-choice and monopoly reforms - instead, they hardened their monopoly, cut budgets, and raised taxes.
They forced people like Suzanne Aucoin and Shona Holmes to the United States for health treatment. Secretive Liberals such as Jim Bradley hide from scrutiny and refuse to provide any information as to how many patients Ontario sends to the United states - and why.
McGuinty's Liberals love to fearmonger about any proposed competitive changes to their health monopoly - aka McGuinty's Health Control Board - while doing nothing but throwing money into their monopolist black-hole and hoping that somehow things get better.
Meanwhile, the Liberals hide from scrutiny and accountability, and refuse to discuss the link to their global budget-funding model (distributed through their puppet LHINs) and subsequent hospital budget and service cuts, hospital board takeovers, and patient death-rates.
The "secret agenda" of McGuinty's Grits is to delay any changes to their failing monopolism, for as long as possible, no matter how many patients they inconvenience or hurt; in the hope that they will be rescued from actually dealing with their own failed ideology by a court decision telling them what they should have already figured out - that their monopolist single-payer health care is a failure.
The irrational part is: that while knowing this - McGuinty and his Liberal statist single-payer-pushing monopolist goons
nevertheless continue to sadistically assault the patients of Ontario.
*
"Dr. Robert Ouellet and U.S. President Barack Obama have something in common.
Both are urging fundamental reform in the way their countries approach health care, and both are getting strong resistance from those who favour the status quo.
The president of the Canadian Medical Association has spent most of the last year trying to interject some common sense into Canadian health care. Unfortunately, Canadians prefer to keep plugging along just as they have in the past, despite mounting evidence that our system is inefficient and doesn't serve patients nearly as well as it should for the money we spend.
Two recent reports make that important point. The latest health statistics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development show that Canada was the fifth-highest spender among the 31 countries assessed in 2007. Despite that, we have below-average numbers of doctors, nurses, acute care hospital beds, CT scanners and MRIs. Another study, the Euro-Canada Health Consumer Index, looked at a wide variety of healthcare statistics from 32 countries and tried to assess "bang for the buck" in each national healthcare system.
Canada finished last.
The two think-tanks responsible for the study don't claim that their methodology is perfect, but the conclusion is clear: Canada can do a lot better for the money it is spending.
That's the point that Ouellet has been trying to drive home, and he has some ideas about how we can do it. His central message is that we should have a patient-centred system. "If the healthcare system is not centred on the patient, who is it centred on?" he asks.
Consider the never-changing list of intractable Canadian healthcare problems: We have long wait times for a wide variety of medical services. Our emergency room rooms are clogged. Our hospital beds are often filled with people who should be getting long-term care instead.
We are not the only country to have these problems, but others have found solutions.
Ouellet has visited England, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and France to study their systems. All offer universal access, as does Canada. In England, he found that teams of doctors, nurses and hospital administrators had worked to streamline emergency room procedures, and there is now a four-hour wait time benchmark.
Hospital funding in Britain has been changed so that they are paid for the services they provide.
In Canada, our hospitals get a global budget that reflects the increase the government is prepared to pay, combined with a guess at service volume. Every patient the hospital sees drains that budget, leading to the dreaded deficit and the predictable annual scolding from government. In the British system, patients bring the hospital revenue, so there is an incentive to treat more of them, not fewer. That sounds costly, but it is balanced by tough efficiency targets.
In Denmark, long-term care is a municipal responsibility and if there is no space, the municipality has to pay the hospital. That provides an incentive to provide long-term care homes. In Canada, one government pays either way, so there isn't much incentive.
Denmark also has a safety valve for cancer patients. If they can't get treatment within one month, they are allowed to go to a private clinic and the government health system pays.
The idea of an alternative to the current monopoly on most major forms of health care is critical to the idea of a patient-first system, Ouellet argues. Without it, there is no real pressure for government health care to deliver timely results and no alternative for patients when it doesn't. Ouellet himself is a radiologist who runs a private clinic in Quebec providing service to those whose health benefits will cover it.
Ouellet's point makes sense, but as soon as the words "private health care" are mentioned in Canada, we launch into comparisons with the American system, surely the most costly and least efficient in the world. Our universal healthcare system is held up as a Canadian value, as if we were the only ones who had it.
It's an irrational way to see the situation. There is already a substantial private sector involvement here in things such as diagnostic testing, and that's not an issue. When we use our supplementary medical benefits to pay for an eye exam, prescription drugs or physiotherapy, we are all using private medicine. These are things government provides in limited supply or not at all. Should we ban these extras?
As Ouellet envisions it, a somewhat expanded private sector would not be a parallel system drawing away doctors from public health care, but rather an opportunity for doctors to do supplementary work without restrictions on their operating time or long waits for diagnostic tests. The bulk of any physician's billing would still be in the public system.
Ouellet reports that health ministers have been listening to what he has to say, although there is limited action so far. When government does act, it is usually to throw more money at the problem and hope that it will resolve itself. As the international studies show, Canada's problem is not a lack of money in the system, it's a lack of thinking about how we spend it. We should start by being more open-minded, and by considering how countries very much like our own have dealt with the same problems."
*
Look how open minded Ontario's Tax-and-Spend Liberals are - Greg Sorbara raised a new health tax after Liberals lied they wouldn't raise taxes; Dalton McGuinty and MPP Liberal Jim Bradley ran on their patented fearmongering allegations about 'Harris and two tier' - then, once elected, George Smitherman cut health care - while Liberals raised billions in new health taxes.
McGuinty dumps money into a health system which Smitherman claimed 'we didn't even have'.
As for health care, the focus, as far as any Liberal is concerned, is not on the patient - it's on maintaining the Liberals' duplicitous political status-quo as supposed-defenders of some kind of storied Tommy Douglasonian vision, regardless of how harmful or inefficient that Utopian ideal may be. (The federal Liberals' sanctimonious reaction to Pierre Pettigrew's mild reform ideas is a classic example.)
Remember how McGuinty fearmongered back in Apr.27, 2001, in the Toronto Star: "We've been saying for some time now that Mike Harris has a secret agenda to promote two-tier health care in Ontario and now the secret is out" when Harris touched on similar ideas that Ouellet is now trying to discuss. Look how much time has been lost and wasted since. Years later, the Chaoulli decision came in Quebec, yet McGuinty's ideologues still did nothing to phase in patient-choice and monopoly reforms - instead, they hardened their monopoly, cut budgets, and raised taxes.
They forced people like Suzanne Aucoin and Shona Holmes to the United States for health treatment. Secretive Liberals such as Jim Bradley hide from scrutiny and refuse to provide any information as to how many patients Ontario sends to the United states - and why.
McGuinty's Liberals love to fearmonger about any proposed competitive changes to their health monopoly - aka McGuinty's Health Control Board - while doing nothing but throwing money into their monopolist black-hole and hoping that somehow things get better.
Meanwhile, the Liberals hide from scrutiny and accountability, and refuse to discuss the link to their global budget-funding model (distributed through their puppet LHINs) and subsequent hospital budget and service cuts, hospital board takeovers, and patient death-rates.
The "secret agenda" of McGuinty's Grits is to delay any changes to their failing monopolism, for as long as possible, no matter how many patients they inconvenience or hurt; in the hope that they will be rescued from actually dealing with their own failed ideology by a court decision telling them what they should have already figured out - that their monopolist single-payer health care is a failure.
The irrational part is: that while knowing this - McGuinty and his Liberal statist single-payer-pushing monopolist goons
nevertheless continue to sadistically assault the patients of Ontario.
*
Friday, August 7, 2009
The Hunt farmhouse demolished in St. Catharines
Grant LaFleche wrote in "Demolition will be bittersweet", (St. Catharines Standard, May 26, 2009):
"When the wrecking ball makes its first pass through the old red-brick farmhouse, Margaret Pulford won't be anywhere nearby.
She has made her peace with the fact that the home of five generations of her family will soon be reduced to rubble. And she couldn't be happier that it is making way for a new St. Catharines hospital.
But that doesn't mean Pulford will be able to watch the death of her family home next month.
"It's the memories. The memories of your home. Those are always special," Pulford said, standing outside the farmhouse near the intersection of Fourth Avenue and First Street. "I won't be able to watch that. I just couldn't."
Sometime between June 2 and June 29, the house, which dates back to the late 19th century, will be torn down as part of the site preparation for the new hospital.
Once it and the nearby barn have been removed, construction crews will begin the four-year process of building the 970,000-square-foot, 375-bed acute-care hospital, which is expected to open in early 2013.
The house was the heartbeat of a 45-acre farm - first a dairy farm and then a vineyard run by the Blundell family, including Pulford's mother.
The two-storey building was subdivided into two homes, one where Pulford's grandfather lived and the other where Margaret Pulford and her husband, Ross, stayed.
They lived there for 38 years and raised their two children, Pulford said.
"About 15 years ago I pulled the grapes out," Ross Pulford said.
"The price of them was going down and down and the cost of keeping them was constantly rising."
Although the couple lived in the house, it was actually owned by Margaret Pulford, her two brothers and sister and their parents, Dr. Douglas Earl Hunt and Jean Hunt.
When the family was approached to sell the house in 2003 to make way for a hospital, Pulford said the decision turned out to be easier than expected.
"My parents, and especially my father, were absolutely thrilled that a hospital was going to be built here," Pulford said.
"They were even going to make a special parking space for my father, who was still practising medicine up till about two months before he died three years ago."
Even though the family agreed to sell, it was difficult to grasp the idea that the house would eventually be knocked down.
Fortunately for Pulford and her husband, it has taken years for the new hospital to reach the point where construction could begin.
"We were constantly being told we were going to have to move out," Ross Pulford said. "We had something like seven going-away parties. Our friends started to laugh because every Christmas we would say this was going to the last one in the house. And they would say, 'Oh we've heard that one before.'
"It took a long time, but it was good for us because it allowed us to get our heads around it."
Eventually, the hospital project moved forward and last month it was official -- construction would soon begin and the house would come down.
The Pulfords have since moved into a new home and visiting "the farm," as they call it, is an event tinged with a little melancholy.
"It's amazing how much it is already started to fall apart with nobody living here," Pulford said. "The barns look ready to fall down."
While the home will be destroyed, its history will be preserved, said Lisa Morley, the communications co-ordinator for the new hospital project.
"We're not sure yet exactly what will be preserved, but certainly some of the brick and the beams," she said.
The materials will be incorporated into the hospital building. There will also be a display in the hospital featuring some of the more historically interesting artifacts from the house, she said. "
*
R. Bobak wrote in "NHS should find a way to save the old farmhouse", (St. Catharines Standard, May 30, 2009):
"Re: "Demolition will be bittersweet", May 26, 2009
It's regrettable that the Niagara Health System can't be bothered to find a creative way to preserve the Hunt farmhouse and incorporate it into its hospital site plan.
What, is it in the way of a couple of parking spots?
Saving some old bricks and beams is not the same as saving the structure. The farmhouse is an authentic link to Niagara's agricultural past; it provides historical context as the surrounding farmland is redeveloped.
Is this not heritage worthy of preservation?"
*
below: The Hunt farm property (centre-left) was located on the west side of First St. Louth, between the CN railroad tracks and Fourth Ave. The farmhouse stood facing First St. Louth, opposite the T-intersection with Burbank Dr. (see red arrows in centre) [click on any photo to enlarge!]
below: closer view of the Hunt farm, two barns, and long shed
above: same aerial view, with site completed and in service. The farmhouse footprint was smaller than the width of the new entrance road. It could have easily been restored and remained at the corner of the parking lot, repurposed for some other viable use - office space, meeting rooms, café, etc.
below: Jun.2, 2009 - Looking at the front of the Hunt farmhouse, from the south-east.
below: Jun.2, 2009 - same view of the house, from a little further back, showing its close proximity to the road in front, First St. Louth.
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009. The solid brick house has been demolished by the NHS government health agency. Obviously, the heritage of this Niagara home wasn't worth preserving. What a shame. No cucumber trees here for local Liberal MPP Jim Bulldozer Bradley to 'save'.
above: same view, Sept.28, 2009 - red truck parked where the house once stood. Thankfully, a new parking lot now occupies the 'massive' (!) footprint which had once been taken up by the farm house. Obviously, the old house was just in the way - of several parking spots - can't have that!! As can be seen, there was enough room there that the farmhouse could have easily remained to serve a new purpose.
*
below: Jun.2, 2009, looking at the Hunt farmhouse from across the street. (Burbank Dr. is at the far lower right). If the opportunity had been approached creatively, this heritage house, with its small footprint, and with such close proximity to the street, certainly could have been restored and maintained as a functional outbuilding on the new hospital site. No one bothered to raise a concern for saving the structure; the "green" proud mayor of St. Catharines, Brian McMullan, said nothing.
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009. The site where the Hunt home sat has been levelled, along with the mature trees that surrounded it. Note the two chestnut trees, which stood near the street, right in front of the Hunt house, now appear severely damaged.
*
below: Jun.2, 2009, closer view from the corner of Burbank Dr. and First St. Louth
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009
*
"When the wrecking ball makes its first pass through the old red-brick farmhouse, Margaret Pulford won't be anywhere nearby.
She has made her peace with the fact that the home of five generations of her family will soon be reduced to rubble. And she couldn't be happier that it is making way for a new St. Catharines hospital.
But that doesn't mean Pulford will be able to watch the death of her family home next month.
"It's the memories. The memories of your home. Those are always special," Pulford said, standing outside the farmhouse near the intersection of Fourth Avenue and First Street. "I won't be able to watch that. I just couldn't."
Sometime between June 2 and June 29, the house, which dates back to the late 19th century, will be torn down as part of the site preparation for the new hospital.
Once it and the nearby barn have been removed, construction crews will begin the four-year process of building the 970,000-square-foot, 375-bed acute-care hospital, which is expected to open in early 2013.
The house was the heartbeat of a 45-acre farm - first a dairy farm and then a vineyard run by the Blundell family, including Pulford's mother.
The two-storey building was subdivided into two homes, one where Pulford's grandfather lived and the other where Margaret Pulford and her husband, Ross, stayed.
They lived there for 38 years and raised their two children, Pulford said.
"About 15 years ago I pulled the grapes out," Ross Pulford said.
"The price of them was going down and down and the cost of keeping them was constantly rising."
Although the couple lived in the house, it was actually owned by Margaret Pulford, her two brothers and sister and their parents, Dr. Douglas Earl Hunt and Jean Hunt.
When the family was approached to sell the house in 2003 to make way for a hospital, Pulford said the decision turned out to be easier than expected.
"My parents, and especially my father, were absolutely thrilled that a hospital was going to be built here," Pulford said.
"They were even going to make a special parking space for my father, who was still practising medicine up till about two months before he died three years ago."
Even though the family agreed to sell, it was difficult to grasp the idea that the house would eventually be knocked down.
Fortunately for Pulford and her husband, it has taken years for the new hospital to reach the point where construction could begin.
"We were constantly being told we were going to have to move out," Ross Pulford said. "We had something like seven going-away parties. Our friends started to laugh because every Christmas we would say this was going to the last one in the house. And they would say, 'Oh we've heard that one before.'
"It took a long time, but it was good for us because it allowed us to get our heads around it."
Eventually, the hospital project moved forward and last month it was official -- construction would soon begin and the house would come down.
The Pulfords have since moved into a new home and visiting "the farm," as they call it, is an event tinged with a little melancholy.
"It's amazing how much it is already started to fall apart with nobody living here," Pulford said. "The barns look ready to fall down."
While the home will be destroyed, its history will be preserved, said Lisa Morley, the communications co-ordinator for the new hospital project.
"We're not sure yet exactly what will be preserved, but certainly some of the brick and the beams," she said.
The materials will be incorporated into the hospital building. There will also be a display in the hospital featuring some of the more historically interesting artifacts from the house, she said. "
*
R. Bobak wrote in "NHS should find a way to save the old farmhouse", (St. Catharines Standard, May 30, 2009):
"Re: "Demolition will be bittersweet", May 26, 2009
It's regrettable that the Niagara Health System can't be bothered to find a creative way to preserve the Hunt farmhouse and incorporate it into its hospital site plan.
What, is it in the way of a couple of parking spots?
Saving some old bricks and beams is not the same as saving the structure. The farmhouse is an authentic link to Niagara's agricultural past; it provides historical context as the surrounding farmland is redeveloped.
Is this not heritage worthy of preservation?"
*
below: The Hunt farm property (centre-left) was located on the west side of First St. Louth, between the CN railroad tracks and Fourth Ave. The farmhouse stood facing First St. Louth, opposite the T-intersection with Burbank Dr. (see red arrows in centre) [click on any photo to enlarge!]
below: closer view of the Hunt farm, two barns, and long shed
below: Jun.2, 2009 - Looking at the front of the Hunt farmhouse, from the south-east.
below: Jun.2, 2009 - same view of the house, from a little further back, showing its close proximity to the road in front, First St. Louth.
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009. The solid brick house has been demolished by the NHS government health agency. Obviously, the heritage of this Niagara home wasn't worth preserving. What a shame. No cucumber trees here for local Liberal MPP Jim Bulldozer Bradley to 'save'.
above: same view, Sept.28, 2009 - red truck parked where the house once stood. Thankfully, a new parking lot now occupies the 'massive' (!) footprint which had once been taken up by the farm house. Obviously, the old house was just in the way - of several parking spots - can't have that!! As can be seen, there was enough room there that the farmhouse could have easily remained to serve a new purpose. *
below: Jun.2, 2009, looking at the Hunt farmhouse from across the street. (Burbank Dr. is at the far lower right). If the opportunity had been approached creatively, this heritage house, with its small footprint, and with such close proximity to the street, certainly could have been restored and maintained as a functional outbuilding on the new hospital site. No one bothered to raise a concern for saving the structure; the "green" proud mayor of St. Catharines, Brian McMullan, said nothing.
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009. The site where the Hunt home sat has been levelled, along with the mature trees that surrounded it. Note the two chestnut trees, which stood near the street, right in front of the Hunt house, now appear severely damaged.*
below: Jun.2, 2009, closer view from the corner of Burbank Dr. and First St. Louth
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009*
below: Jun.2, 2009, view from south-east
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009
*
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009*
below: Jun.17, 2009
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009
above: Sept.22, 2009 - there is a new parking lot at the right where the house had stood.
*
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009above: Sept.22, 2009 - there is a new parking lot at the right where the house had stood.*
below: Jun.17, 2009, view of the front of the house
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009
above: same view, Sept.28, 2009 - the house was bulldozed for a few parking spaces. The trees by the road are now dead.
*
below: Jun.17, 2009, looking at the Hunt farmhouse from the north-east. Note the mature pines cut down and laying at the north side of the house.
above: same view, Aug.7, 2009 
above: same view, Sept.28, 2009 - a nice new parking lot covers the location where the farm house had stood
*
below: Jun.17, 2009 - the north-east corner of the farmhouse is at the left; this view shows the proximity of the farmhouse to two of its outlying barns, which were north-west of the farmhouse.
below: Jun.17, 2009 - a closer view of the barns as seen looking west from First Ave. Louth.
Above: Aug.7, 2009 - exact same view of where the now-bulldozed barns, seen above, stood.
Above: same view, Sept.28, 2009 - a new parking lot has now taken the place of the barns and field, as well.
above: a last closer look at the south-east corner of the Hunt farmhouse, as it was on Jun.17, 2009.
below: Jun.17, 2009 - a closer view of the barns as seen looking west from First Ave. Louth.
Above: Aug.7, 2009 - exact same view of where the now-bulldozed barns, seen above, stood.
Above: same view, Sept.28, 2009 - a new parking lot has now taken the place of the barns and field, as well.
*
Below: a last closer look at the north-east corner of the old Hunt farmhouse, as it was on Jun.17, 2009.
above: a last closer look at the south-east corner of the Hunt farmhouse, as it was on Jun.17, 2009.
Photos above and video below by R. Bobak.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Orwell's Obamarx goes fishin'
First, U.S. government health care agents were supposed to 'counsel' gramma because, well... she's gettin' too old an' costin' too much.
Now, the Obama Administration wants Americans to report "fishy" health care e-mails? What, again, is going on down at the White Castle?
Why don't Demotards report themselves, or CommonDreams, for starters?!
Check out Charles Krauthammer on Fox News, Aug.6, 2009 (see: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,537682,00.html):
"Look, I'm not as sanguine as my colleagues on this. The first amendment says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. And now, apparently, however, the president will collect e-mails that contain fishy disinformation. I mean, that's Orwellian language that you expect and get out of Hugo Chavez as he shuts down 100 radio stations.
I don't think there is a vast conspiracy of collecting IP addresses, but a White House ought not be collecting disinformation. Even that language is language that America doesn't use. It is a language of dictators.
And the tactic here is Chicago-thug politics. It is disgraceful."
Locally, Sandy Beach was steaming and in fine form today on his radio show (Aug.6, 2009, WBEN 930 AM Buffalo). Beach said that for the first time in his experience, Americans were actually becoming afraid of their own government. One caller, Dom, said that he no longer thought of Obama as a socialist, but as a "full Marxist"!
Bobby Eberle wrote a good article in "Watch out! Obama is creating a White House 'Enemies' list" (The Loft, Aug.6, 2009, see: http://www.gopusa.com/theloft/?p=1794), which he closed by stating:
"Obama is trying to chip away at our rights. All one has to do is look at what he's already done. He has stated in the past that he wants to do away with private health insurance. Now he's trying to spin it that he doesn't. He is also trying to stop any disagreement to his plans by fear and intimidation. If you disagree with him, you are not a concerned citizen... you are part of an angry mob. And... if you are part of an angry mob, it is up to Obama's Americans to report you. Does this sound like the land of the free and the home of the brave to you?"
- Finally. mercifully, the 8 pathetic years of Obama's deplorable presidency came to a close, with his deluded Chicago Farewell Address speech on Jan.10, 2017.
In the Nov 2016 US presidential election, the disgusting Obama had made a great deal about Russians spying on the United States (...and this after ignoring and laughing at Romney's prescient claim that Russia was a threat!!} Yet, Obama himself was doing the same thing years earlier.
The American press just forgot about all that.
Now, the Obama Administration wants Americans to report "fishy" health care e-mails? What, again, is going on down at the White Castle?
Why don't Demotards report themselves, or CommonDreams, for starters?!
Check out Charles Krauthammer on Fox News, Aug.6, 2009 (see: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,537682,00.html):
"Look, I'm not as sanguine as my colleagues on this. The first amendment says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. And now, apparently, however, the president will collect e-mails that contain fishy disinformation. I mean, that's Orwellian language that you expect and get out of Hugo Chavez as he shuts down 100 radio stations.
I don't think there is a vast conspiracy of collecting IP addresses, but a White House ought not be collecting disinformation. Even that language is language that America doesn't use. It is a language of dictators.
And the tactic here is Chicago-thug politics. It is disgraceful."
Locally, Sandy Beach was steaming and in fine form today on his radio show (Aug.6, 2009, WBEN 930 AM Buffalo). Beach said that for the first time in his experience, Americans were actually becoming afraid of their own government. One caller, Dom, said that he no longer thought of Obama as a socialist, but as a "full Marxist"!
Bobby Eberle wrote a good article in "Watch out! Obama is creating a White House 'Enemies' list" (The Loft, Aug.6, 2009, see: http://www.gopusa.com/theloft/?p=1794), which he closed by stating:
"Obama is trying to chip away at our rights. All one has to do is look at what he's already done. He has stated in the past that he wants to do away with private health insurance. Now he's trying to spin it that he doesn't. He is also trying to stop any disagreement to his plans by fear and intimidation. If you disagree with him, you are not a concerned citizen... you are part of an angry mob. And... if you are part of an angry mob, it is up to Obama's Americans to report you. Does this sound like the land of the free and the home of the brave to you?"
- Finally. mercifully, the 8 pathetic years of Obama's deplorable presidency came to a close, with his deluded Chicago Farewell Address speech on Jan.10, 2017.
In the Nov 2016 US presidential election, the disgusting Obama had made a great deal about Russians spying on the United States (...and this after ignoring and laughing at Romney's prescient claim that Russia was a threat!!} Yet, Obama himself was doing the same thing years earlier.
The American press just forgot about all that.
Will Iggy become a Single-Payer heretic?
Or, will Iggy remain a Single-Payer demagogue?
Having read Michael Den Tandt's article "Ignatieff's invisibility leaves void"...
(see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/08/iggy-and-health-reform-are-you-kidding.html)
... where Den Tandt wrote, regarding Michael Ignatieff's lack of any grand vision:
"Every serious analyst of our health-care system says the present model is unsustainable, given the aging baby boomers. Where is the plan to move beyond our national theological devotion to the status quo on health care?"
...I refer Den Tandt's argument to this next article to explain why Iggy will not dare to "move beyond our national theological devotion" (perhaps "delusion" - or "obsession" - are better words?) "to the staus quo on health care": See http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/06/ontarios-liberal-health-care-hypocrites.html .
Reading Den Tandt, I was again reminded of Liberal MP Keith Martin's great article, "Four Ways to Fix Health Care", (National Post, Sept.16, 2006):
(see Page 23: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberal-healthcare-duplicity-ontario.html)
and
(see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2008/03/canadian-health-care-history-enough-to.html)
... where Martin (a Liberal MP) boldly wrote:
“In his Sept. 9 column, "Where's the debate on Medicare?" John Turley-Ewart poignantly expressed the horrible experience endured by his ailing mother as she waited for care that came too late. He criticized all political parties for neglecting to offer bold solutions to fix our health care system. However, I can assure the author that within the Liberal party there is a dynamic debate concerning this, the most important issue affecting Canadians. The solutions offered in our debates are varied, and mirror those echoed by Canadians from coast to coast. But while this debate is essential, it must not hinder action.
As a physician, I became a Member of Parliament to save our public health care system because I saw too many patients like Mrs. Turley, who needlessly suffered in silence, or died because they got access to a waiting list, not access to care. Our ageing population and increasingly expensive medical technologies are resulting in an 8% per year increase in costs, while revenues are rising at 3% per year. This has resulted in an ever widening gap between supply and demand. Most provinces spend roughly 40% of their revenues on health care. By 2017, this one item will consume over 70% of their budgets, an utterly unsustainable burden for any province.
Today, this gap between supply and demand manifests itself in longer waiting lines, bed closures, the withdrawal of funding for services ("delisting") and our inability to hire health care professionals. In this environment, it is the poor and middle class who get hurt, not the rich, for they can always go to the United States to receive their care. The facts are stark, frightening and irrefutable. For all patients, the rhetoric must be buried and solutions implemented based on these facts.
So what are some of those solutions?
1. Modernize the Canada Health Act (CHA) to allow the private sector to support the public sector by taking some of the demand out of the public system without removing resources. (Allow people to purchase services with their own money separate from the public system, and forbid public monies from co-funding procedures.)
Many of the principles in the Canada Health Act are excellent, but the single-payer (read: government) requirement is a major obstacle to enabling achievement of the other four principles (comprehensiveness, universality, portability and accessibility). In fact, anyone who works in health care knows that all five principles of the CHA are broken in every province, every day, because of the increasing gap between supply and demand. A modernized Canada Health Act should ensure timely access to quality care for all Canadians regardless of their income, and that this benefit is portable across the land.
2. We need a national human-resource strategy for health care personnel; doctors, nurses, technicians, etc. As we get older, so to do our health care workers, which is causing a crisis in medical manpower, and a deficit that cannot be rectified quickly, or easily.
3. We need a national strategy on mental health. According to the World Health Organization, depression will become the second leading cause of illness in the world. Furthermore, with our ageing population, we will see a massive increase in the incidence of dementias, a situation we are completely unprepared for.
4. We need a Centre for Best Health Care Practices. It is surprising how poor we are at accumulating and disseminating information about best practices. This centre could be within the existing framework of the Canadian Institute for Health Research or the Canadian Institute for Heath Information.
These suggestions would dramatically improve access to health care in Canada. If the feds and the provinces (which are the managers of health care) implement these solutions, we will have a public health care system that will ensure that, regardless of your income or where you fall ill, you will have access to quality care in a timely fashion, not just entry into a waiting list. In doing so, tragedies such as that which befell Mrs. Turley will thankfully become a thing of the past.”
*
Iggy doesn't believe in any of this - does he?!
Iggy still spouts the same tired old B.S. that Good Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's been spoutin' in Ontario for years; fearmongering the same old rhetoric about the two-tier boogeyman, while demonizing anyone who remotely suggests monopoly health reform.
[I wrote Liberal MPP Jim Bradley back in 2006, asking Bradley for his response to Keith Martin's proposals: see http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/12/health-system-reform-still-waiting-for.html. An ignorant, secretive Bradley has not yet bothered to discuss Martin's views!]
Den Tandt is dreaming if he thinks Iggy would ever come out and challenge the legitimacy of single-payer. Remember in 2004 how sanctimonious Liberals - under Paul Martin - went ballistic when poor Pierre Pettigrew dared to mention even a slight hint of health reform?!
Who believes that Iggy will now point out to Canadians that single-payer is the problem!! This is heresy to Liberals!
Who believes that any Liberal will actually take Keith Martin's sensible views seriously!! You can bet Carolyn Bennett won't! Liberal elitism demands that Canadians have to learn to be dependent upon - to be forced to rely on - Liberal magnanimity when it comes to dolloping out heapin' helpin's of healthcare!
And where is this 'dynamic debate within the Liberal party' regarding health care reform, which Martin refers to??
THERE IS NONE!!
Under the ridiculous leadership of Liberal clown Stephane Bumbledore Dion there was NO HEALTH DEBATE whatsoever!
Defending/maintaining the status quo IS the status quo; whether the single-payer system even works or not has become irrelevant!
See also: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/04/canada-does-not-have-best-health-care.html)
*
Having read Michael Den Tandt's article "Ignatieff's invisibility leaves void"...
(see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/08/iggy-and-health-reform-are-you-kidding.html)
... where Den Tandt wrote, regarding Michael Ignatieff's lack of any grand vision:
"Every serious analyst of our health-care system says the present model is unsustainable, given the aging baby boomers. Where is the plan to move beyond our national theological devotion to the status quo on health care?"
...I refer Den Tandt's argument to this next article to explain why Iggy will not dare to "move beyond our national theological devotion" (perhaps "delusion" - or "obsession" - are better words?) "to the staus quo on health care": See http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/06/ontarios-liberal-health-care-hypocrites.html .
Reading Den Tandt, I was again reminded of Liberal MP Keith Martin's great article, "Four Ways to Fix Health Care", (National Post, Sept.16, 2006):
(see Page 23: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberal-healthcare-duplicity-ontario.html)
and
(see: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2008/03/canadian-health-care-history-enough-to.html)
... where Martin (a Liberal MP) boldly wrote:
“In his Sept. 9 column, "Where's the debate on Medicare?" John Turley-Ewart poignantly expressed the horrible experience endured by his ailing mother as she waited for care that came too late. He criticized all political parties for neglecting to offer bold solutions to fix our health care system. However, I can assure the author that within the Liberal party there is a dynamic debate concerning this, the most important issue affecting Canadians. The solutions offered in our debates are varied, and mirror those echoed by Canadians from coast to coast. But while this debate is essential, it must not hinder action.
As a physician, I became a Member of Parliament to save our public health care system because I saw too many patients like Mrs. Turley, who needlessly suffered in silence, or died because they got access to a waiting list, not access to care. Our ageing population and increasingly expensive medical technologies are resulting in an 8% per year increase in costs, while revenues are rising at 3% per year. This has resulted in an ever widening gap between supply and demand. Most provinces spend roughly 40% of their revenues on health care. By 2017, this one item will consume over 70% of their budgets, an utterly unsustainable burden for any province.
Today, this gap between supply and demand manifests itself in longer waiting lines, bed closures, the withdrawal of funding for services ("delisting") and our inability to hire health care professionals. In this environment, it is the poor and middle class who get hurt, not the rich, for they can always go to the United States to receive their care. The facts are stark, frightening and irrefutable. For all patients, the rhetoric must be buried and solutions implemented based on these facts.
So what are some of those solutions?
1. Modernize the Canada Health Act (CHA) to allow the private sector to support the public sector by taking some of the demand out of the public system without removing resources. (Allow people to purchase services with their own money separate from the public system, and forbid public monies from co-funding procedures.)
Many of the principles in the Canada Health Act are excellent, but the single-payer (read: government) requirement is a major obstacle to enabling achievement of the other four principles (comprehensiveness, universality, portability and accessibility). In fact, anyone who works in health care knows that all five principles of the CHA are broken in every province, every day, because of the increasing gap between supply and demand. A modernized Canada Health Act should ensure timely access to quality care for all Canadians regardless of their income, and that this benefit is portable across the land.
2. We need a national human-resource strategy for health care personnel; doctors, nurses, technicians, etc. As we get older, so to do our health care workers, which is causing a crisis in medical manpower, and a deficit that cannot be rectified quickly, or easily.
3. We need a national strategy on mental health. According to the World Health Organization, depression will become the second leading cause of illness in the world. Furthermore, with our ageing population, we will see a massive increase in the incidence of dementias, a situation we are completely unprepared for.
4. We need a Centre for Best Health Care Practices. It is surprising how poor we are at accumulating and disseminating information about best practices. This centre could be within the existing framework of the Canadian Institute for Health Research or the Canadian Institute for Heath Information.
These suggestions would dramatically improve access to health care in Canada. If the feds and the provinces (which are the managers of health care) implement these solutions, we will have a public health care system that will ensure that, regardless of your income or where you fall ill, you will have access to quality care in a timely fashion, not just entry into a waiting list. In doing so, tragedies such as that which befell Mrs. Turley will thankfully become a thing of the past.”
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Iggy doesn't believe in any of this - does he?!
Iggy still spouts the same tired old B.S. that Good Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's been spoutin' in Ontario for years; fearmongering the same old rhetoric about the two-tier boogeyman, while demonizing anyone who remotely suggests monopoly health reform.
[I wrote Liberal MPP Jim Bradley back in 2006, asking Bradley for his response to Keith Martin's proposals: see http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2007/12/health-system-reform-still-waiting-for.html. An ignorant, secretive Bradley has not yet bothered to discuss Martin's views!]
Den Tandt is dreaming if he thinks Iggy would ever come out and challenge the legitimacy of single-payer. Remember in 2004 how sanctimonious Liberals - under Paul Martin - went ballistic when poor Pierre Pettigrew dared to mention even a slight hint of health reform?!
Who believes that Iggy will now point out to Canadians that single-payer is the problem!! This is heresy to Liberals!
Who believes that any Liberal will actually take Keith Martin's sensible views seriously!! You can bet Carolyn Bennett won't! Liberal elitism demands that Canadians have to learn to be dependent upon - to be forced to rely on - Liberal magnanimity when it comes to dolloping out heapin' helpin's of healthcare!
And where is this 'dynamic debate within the Liberal party' regarding health care reform, which Martin refers to??
THERE IS NONE!!
Under the ridiculous leadership of Liberal clown Stephane Bumbledore Dion there was NO HEALTH DEBATE whatsoever!
Defending/maintaining the status quo IS the status quo; whether the single-payer system even works or not has become irrelevant!
What a sad, sad, sad state of affairs. How much time we have lost; how many Canadians have needlessly suffered and died, for the sake of a bankrupt ideology?
And now, Ontarians such as Shona Holmes are forced to launch lawsuits against the Liberal healthcare duplicity which runs rampant and unchecked in Ontario.
*See also: http://rightinniagara.blogspot.com/2009/04/canada-does-not-have-best-health-care.html)
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