Jim Bradley's horrific healthscare monopoly

Further to the subject of my earlier post "Another health care horror story in Niagara", we see that Jim Bradley's Liberal health-care nightmare continues for Niagara's patients, as Christina Blizzard wrote in "A health-care horror story in Niagara" (Nov.27, 2010):

"When Guy Simpson woke up with a bad headache in January, he thought his sinuses were acting up.

Two weeks later, when the headaches got worse and other symptoms appeared, the Fort Erie resident went to his family doctor.

He sent him to an eye doctor, who sent him for a CAT scan in Niagara Falls. He was told his symptoms were neurological and he needed an MRI.

On Feb. 2, Simpson, 49, was given an MRI date of April 15.

With the help of a friend, he managed to push up his appointment with a neurologist from April 1 to Feb. 23.

By Feb. 9, he was bedridden and in unbearable pain.

His family doctor tried to get an emergency MRI at St. Catharines General Hospital and sent Simpson to the ER with a note.

In St. Catharines, Simpson was told his family doctor didn't have the authority to order an MRI. He was told he had a head injury and the condition would improve on its own.

Meanwhile, another doctor managed to move his MRI date up to April 1.

When he got the results April 6, he was told he had a large, possibly cancerous tumour around his pituitary gland compressing the nerves in his eye and extending into his sinuses and wrapped around his carotid artery.

His doctor pushed for an appointment with a neurologist for a body MRI to check for the spread of cancer. The earliest date for that MRI was in August. He got an appointment with the neurologist for April 28.

He was told by the neurologist he needed surgery, but no date was set.

By May 18, Simpson started to have trouble breathing. His wife wanted to call an ambulance, but worried they'd end up sitting in the St. Catharines ER for hours, so she called his doctor, who had him admitted immediately to Hamilton General Hospital.

He had an MRI and a CAT scan within hours. He'd been bedridden for weeks at this point.

He was scheduled for emergency surgery, but it was cancelled three times.

"The way it was explained to me, I was critical but I wasn't at the priority of the critical list, so they were taking priority patients ahead of me.

"It was a 10-day wait before I had surgery," he told me in a phone interview.

On May 26, five months after his symptoms started, surgeons removed a large portion of the cancerous tumour. He came home June 4 and was told also he had an aggressive form of lymphoma and had only weeks to live.

"If I'd had the MRI earlier, which the first couple of doctors I saw were pushing for, I feel I would have been diagnosed earlier," Simpson said.

"I don't think it would have got into my lymph nodes and spread to the rest of my body."

So far, though, he's beating the odds.

The Liberal government has gutted health care in the Niagara Region. Beds have been closed, ER departments either shut down or turned into walk-in clinics.

Simpson read a recent column I wrote about patients being sent to Buffalo for neurosurgery. He wasn't offered that option.

We brag about our universal health-care system. When that universe doesn't include places like Niagara, you have to think this is a health system that's on the ropes."

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Funny how Jim Bradley can't be found for a comment... you can just imagine, though, the indignant uproar which would have erupted from sanctimonious Ole Jim had this happened during Harris' tenure!!
But now, miraculously, this has nothing at all to do with Jim Bradley!! Now, Ole Jimmy's done been vanished, guldarnit.
Where is Good Ole Jimmy's response to this story, which has revealed yet another example of his Liberal health-care monopoly's failure?
These Liberal health-care horror stories keep on piling up, sequel after grisly sequel.
Secretive Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley WILL NOT REVEAL how many Ontario patients are being exported to the United States for medical treatment which mysteriously was not readily available in Ontario's single-payer, Liberal-enforced healthscare TM system.
Liberals Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor are certainly the ones around here in Niagara who have 'bragged' (more like LIED) about the superiority of their monstrous single-payer health-care monopoly.
Jim Bradley, along with the rest of McGuinty's slimy duplicitous Liberals, have smugly laughed at Buffalo for years, deriding their health-care system - and then shuffling patients to Buffalo and other American medical facilities because the Liberal health-monopoly couldn't provide the necessary care here in Ontario!
The real horror story in Niagara and the rest of Ontario is how health-care-cutting, single-payer-monopoly-enforcing Liberal goons such as Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, Dalton McGuinty and Deb Matthews have been lying to us.
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ps: no need to let Michael Moore or Dukakis know about any of this...!
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