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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