Further to my previous post, "Liberals cut health-care to the bone", back from Nov.29, 2008...
... let's put some perspective and context to this mysterious firing of NHS CEO Debbie Sevenpifer, and to Liberal MPP Kim Craitor's comments about having some kind of "independent investigation" into the NHS.
Ray Spiteri wrote in "Leadership change 'just tip of the iceberg' " (St.Catharines Standard, Jan.20, 2011) that Craitor "said an independent investigator could once and for all prove whether the NHS, which was conceived in the late 1990's by the previous Conservative government has delivered on its mandate." (also see here)
So, this is Craitor's political end-game, eh, from the same hypocrite who peddles the patently-phony illusion that somehow health-care 'is NOT political' for Liberals: spinning the blame on Harris (!) linking him to the NHS, while diverting attention away from the role of the Liberal-created LHIN, that unholy Liberal bastard child of George Smitherman and Dalton McGuinty.
Why isn't Craitor asking for an 'independent investigation' INTO HIS OWN LIBERAL-CREATED LHIN's ???!?
Why doesn't Craitor want to 'once and for all prove' whether McSmitherman's LHIN fiasco has 'delivered on its mandate' ??!!...
[...whatever its 'mandate' even was! If the LHIN's mandate was to be a political firewall, insulating Liberals from their own health-care-cutting monopolist disasters, THEN THE LHIN HAS BEEN A WILD SUCCESS!!! Craitor's own spin demonstrates this: Craitor can only fathom that the NHS could be responsible (...responsible for what? Craitor's not sure...) and that only the NHS should be 'investigated' - yet he completely ignores his own Liberal-conceived, Liberal-appointed, and Liberal-funded LHIN - the direct over-seer of the NHS!!]
Kim Craitor ignores the fact that the LHIN runs the NHS (...it's not the other way around..!) and, that the Liberals - HIS Liberals - completely run the LHIN!!!
Is this sequence of authority really so hard for Kimmy to FLICKING understand?
Craitor, the duplicitous weasel, conveniently ignores the fact that it was McGuinty's Liberal health minister Smitherman who, through his LHIN-avatar, forced the NHS into creating and implememting the HIP.
And yet, Kimmy's sticking with the red-herring, diversion-causing line that somehow only the NHS should be 'investigated'?!
Why isn't any Liberal calling for an independent investigation into the LHIN fiasco - and consequently, an investigation directly into the cabinet-level decisions of those Liberals who created the LHIN??!! When the FLICK is that going to happen?!
Sevenpifer mysteriously gets fired - for doing what was asked of her by the Liberal-controlled LHIN and the Liberal Ministry of Health; yet the Liberals - who control the MoH and who created the LHIN - get off scot-free!!
The entire board of the NHS did what the Liberal-controlled LHIN and MoH asked of them, yet everyone one else involved in this incestuous mess IS STILL there - blameless! - EXCEPT for Sevenpifer??!! WTF?
So now, let's go back (re my 'Liberals cut health care to the bone" post above) and let's remember that Craitor, back in late 2007, began calling for some kind of 'governance review' of the NHS.
Let's remember this, and let's ask why Craitor did this, and let's look at what Craitor's demands for some kind of a 'review' ultimately caused.
What could have prompted this call for an NHS 'review'?
It can be posited that in fact, Kim Craitor caused the NHS HIP to be created and implemented, which led to the ER closures.
Craitor had badgered on with his 'review of the NHS governance' mantra to the point where, after numerous reviews were done...
[...and then, even more reviews reviewing the reviews...]
...that his Liberal government, under Smitherman, came up with a scheme to 'save money'...
[...in other words, to reduce the deficits which were due to Liberal underfunding in the first place - though this was denied by Jim Bradley...]
...by forcing the NHS to create a deficit-reducing HIP plan.
Let's remember that it was the Liberal-controlled MoH which demanded that the LHIN do yet another 'review' of the NHS: the NHS then did as they were told by their superiors, and this morphed into the Hospital Improvement Plan (HIP), which was then reviewed and rubber-stamped by Dr.Jack Kitts, after which it was then also approved for implementation by the Liberal-run LHIN - the same LHIN which had ordered the HIP in the first place!!
Then, the entire board of the NHS - not solely [now-scapegoat] Sevenpifer - was ordered to implement the Liberal-instigated and Liberal-approved HIP.
And let's not forget: not one subsequent Liberal health minister ever challenged or decided to cancel the HIP: neither Smitherman, nor Caplan, nor Matthews!
Yet: Kim Craitor walks around as if he has no idea what HIS OWN Liberals were doing!!!
Y'all follow that, so far? If not: read the previous sequence of events again until you understand them.
Craitor's calls for a 'review' of the NHS led to the cost-cutting HIP plan, then to the ER closings and its subsequent repercussions, and to Sevenpifer's firing!
But let's look at what happened prior to Craitor's 'review' calls, at what precipitated these calls: let's look at the Nov.29, 2007 CIHI report which revealed that the NHS - at its St.Catharines site - had the third-highest patient-death-rate in Canada!
This revelation was COMPLETELY and UTTERLY IGNORED by McGuinty's Liberals. The local Liberal monopoly-pushing hacks, MPP's Jim Bradley and Craitor, said NOTHING about this shocking revelation!!
This CIHI story briefly appeared in the local press, then was strangely forgotten (!!) by the local press and never heard of again...
... see:
* Liberal health-care in Ontario: pay more, get less
* A year later, Liberal Jim Bradley still secretive about high death-rate in his government-funded hospital
* Blood-stained hospital curtains can't hide Liberal health-care neglect
* Niagara Health System second-highest deficit in Ontario, third-highest death-rate in Canada
* Liberals force state-run health-monopoly cuts throughout Ontario
* Over 500 C. difficile deaths in their state-run health monopoly, yet Liberals refuse investigation
Read all the above and weep.
And also read: Pressing hard, or hardly pressing, for more Niagara long-term care beds
... and also read:
Hospital death rate in Liberal Jim Bradley's St.Catharines: third-worst in Canada, where I wrote:
"After CIHI released their mortality-rates report on Nov.29, 2007, revealing that St. Catharines General Hospital's death-rate was the third-worst of 85 Canadian hospitals studied, (excluding Quebec), the Liberals trotted out a smoke-and-mirror 'organizational review' of the NHS, but ignored the mortality-rate issue! Local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, who in opposition raised a stink about issues like gasoline prices, couldn't be bothered to raise a stink about this health-care embarrassment in his own city. The Ombudsman's office does not have the mandate to oversee hospitals... unless the government allows the Ombudsman to do so. The Liberals along with Jim Bradley chose not to investigate the high NHS death rates. There was no direct call for the Ombudsman here; nor was there an appointment of a supervisor to the NHS (as occurred at other Ontario hospitals under scrutiny) to pave the way for the Ombudsman. I guess the death rates - at third-worst in the Canada - aren't yet high enough for the Liberals to warrant concern. As James Wallace wrote in the St. Catharines Standard, Dec.1, 2007, "mortality rates at the St. Catharines hospital, for example, are 35 per cent higher than the national average" ... yet, Liberal Jim Bradley didn't even bother to ask for an investigation, nor did Liberal Jim Bradley himself explain, this disturbing revelation. Maybe it's the Liberal way to meet Kyoto-CO2 emissions by controlling the population? High death rates - that's good, pro-environment 'green' policy, isn't it?
It is astounding how Liberal health care duplicity extends to making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for any outside body to investigate the government-run health monopoly, unless they first get PERMISSION from the government! This allows them to control and stage the timing of events. The 'system' has itself and its political masters to protect first; patients and their health-market-needs are not part of this monopoly's priorities. This system is first and foremost a social experiment. Patients are the political guinea pigs.
The reasons for the McCreith/Holmes health-care Charter challenge occurring become clearer when seen in context to this kind of lack of transparency, self-protection, and unresponsiveness surrounding institutionalized monopoly health-care in Ontario. This is the judicial by-pass patients have been forced into because legislated monopoly health-care has clogged Ontario's delivery arteries with socialism.
Patients stuck in this mess have no time for the promises of socialized medicine to kick in - the promises vanish as the failed realities of Smitherman's protected system set in."
Liberal health-monopolists - such as Jim Bradley - pretended that their local health-monopoly, the NHS, WAS NOT underfunded.
[...This the same smarmy Jim Bradley, by the way, who - while underfunding his health-care monopoly; while closing down two Niagara hospital emergency rooms; while forcing ambulances to carry patients to distant hospitals - had the utter audacity to smugly lecture us on Feb.4, 2010 that his "government budget has its limits" when it came to funding the millions in extra ambulance costs which came as a result of Bradley's own Liberal cuts... oh, the irony...!]
Yet - by May 2010 - somehow the Liberals' budget "limits" conveniently disappeared, and Bradley miraculously found $26 million to build a real-high-priority arts centre!! Talk about skewed Liberal priorities and deceptions...!]
Furthermore, McGuinty's Liberals DENIED any links between the CIHI-reported high death-rates and the obvious fact that the Liberal-controlled NHS health-monopoly was underfunded (as even Dr. Kitts had pointed out!!!) Admitting so would be admitting the McGuinty Liberal government's possibly criminal political complicity in the deaths.
And so Craitor popped in with his smokescreen 'review of NHS governance' - a tired form of which he is still pursuing to this day - instead of focusing on his own Liberal government's monopolist health-care demagoguery.
It is truly an astounding feat of Liberal health-care duplicity that the links between the NHS's high patient-death-rate and the Liberals' own health-care cuts remain hidden and unexplained, both by the government and the press, yet somehow, just after the CIHI revelations, the NHS was suddenly found to be in need of 'governance reviews' leading to Liberal-enforced 'HIP' plans, to ER closings, and to Sevenpifer's sacrificial firing - which we're told had nothing to do with the HIP!!
[Huh?! It didn't? Then, pray tell, what did?! We will never be told!]
After the firing, the remaining NHS board then re-iterated their commitment to carry on with the HIP, in a pathetically-hollow gambit to bestow legitimacy upon the HIP, as though its bastard paternity had nothing to do with the Liberals' health-care underfunding, or the subsequent unexplained CIHI-reported death-rates!
And so the institutionalized self-serving spin of McGuinty's Liberal health-monopoly-machine continues.
*
... let's put some perspective and context to this mysterious firing of NHS CEO Debbie Sevenpifer, and to Liberal MPP Kim Craitor's comments about having some kind of "independent investigation" into the NHS.
Ray Spiteri wrote in "Leadership change 'just tip of the iceberg' " (St.Catharines Standard, Jan.20, 2011) that Craitor "said an independent investigator could once and for all prove whether the NHS, which was conceived in the late 1990's by the previous Conservative government has delivered on its mandate." (also see here)
So, this is Craitor's political end-game, eh, from the same hypocrite who peddles the patently-phony illusion that somehow health-care 'is NOT political' for Liberals: spinning the blame on Harris (!) linking him to the NHS, while diverting attention away from the role of the Liberal-created LHIN, that unholy Liberal bastard child of George Smitherman and Dalton McGuinty.
Why isn't Craitor asking for an 'independent investigation' INTO HIS OWN LIBERAL-CREATED LHIN's ???!?
Why doesn't Craitor want to 'once and for all prove' whether McSmitherman's LHIN fiasco has 'delivered on its mandate' ??!!...
[...whatever its 'mandate' even was! If the LHIN's mandate was to be a political firewall, insulating Liberals from their own health-care-cutting monopolist disasters, THEN THE LHIN HAS BEEN A WILD SUCCESS!!! Craitor's own spin demonstrates this: Craitor can only fathom that the NHS could be responsible (...responsible for what? Craitor's not sure...) and that only the NHS should be 'investigated' - yet he completely ignores his own Liberal-conceived, Liberal-appointed, and Liberal-funded LHIN - the direct over-seer of the NHS!!]
Kim Craitor ignores the fact that the LHIN runs the NHS (...it's not the other way around..!) and, that the Liberals - HIS Liberals - completely run the LHIN!!!
Is this sequence of authority really so hard for Kimmy to FLICKING understand?
Craitor, the duplicitous weasel, conveniently ignores the fact that it was McGuinty's Liberal health minister Smitherman who, through his LHIN-avatar, forced the NHS into creating and implememting the HIP.
And yet, Kimmy's sticking with the red-herring, diversion-causing line that somehow only the NHS should be 'investigated'?!
Why isn't any Liberal calling for an independent investigation into the LHIN fiasco - and consequently, an investigation directly into the cabinet-level decisions of those Liberals who created the LHIN??!! When the FLICK is that going to happen?!
Sevenpifer mysteriously gets fired - for doing what was asked of her by the Liberal-controlled LHIN and the Liberal Ministry of Health; yet the Liberals - who control the MoH and who created the LHIN - get off scot-free!!
The entire board of the NHS did what the Liberal-controlled LHIN and MoH asked of them, yet everyone one else involved in this incestuous mess IS STILL there - blameless! - EXCEPT for Sevenpifer??!! WTF?
So now, let's go back (re my 'Liberals cut health care to the bone" post above) and let's remember that Craitor, back in late 2007, began calling for some kind of 'governance review' of the NHS.
Let's remember this, and let's ask why Craitor did this, and let's look at what Craitor's demands for some kind of a 'review' ultimately caused.
What could have prompted this call for an NHS 'review'?
It can be posited that in fact, Kim Craitor caused the NHS HIP to be created and implemented, which led to the ER closures.
Craitor had badgered on with his 'review of the NHS governance' mantra to the point where, after numerous reviews were done...
[...and then, even more reviews reviewing the reviews...]
...that his Liberal government, under Smitherman, came up with a scheme to 'save money'...
[...in other words, to reduce the deficits which were due to Liberal underfunding in the first place - though this was denied by Jim Bradley...]
...by forcing the NHS to create a deficit-reducing HIP plan.
Let's remember that it was the Liberal-controlled MoH which demanded that the LHIN do yet another 'review' of the NHS: the NHS then did as they were told by their superiors, and this morphed into the Hospital Improvement Plan (HIP), which was then reviewed and rubber-stamped by Dr.Jack Kitts, after which it was then also approved for implementation by the Liberal-run LHIN - the same LHIN which had ordered the HIP in the first place!!
Then, the entire board of the NHS - not solely [now-scapegoat] Sevenpifer - was ordered to implement the Liberal-instigated and Liberal-approved HIP.
And let's not forget: not one subsequent Liberal health minister ever challenged or decided to cancel the HIP: neither Smitherman, nor Caplan, nor Matthews!
Yet: Kim Craitor walks around as if he has no idea what HIS OWN Liberals were doing!!!
Y'all follow that, so far? If not: read the previous sequence of events again until you understand them.
Craitor's calls for a 'review' of the NHS led to the cost-cutting HIP plan, then to the ER closings and its subsequent repercussions, and to Sevenpifer's firing!
But let's look at what happened prior to Craitor's 'review' calls, at what precipitated these calls: let's look at the Nov.29, 2007 CIHI report which revealed that the NHS - at its St.Catharines site - had the third-highest patient-death-rate in Canada!
This revelation was COMPLETELY and UTTERLY IGNORED by McGuinty's Liberals. The local Liberal monopoly-pushing hacks, MPP's Jim Bradley and Craitor, said NOTHING about this shocking revelation!!
This CIHI story briefly appeared in the local press, then was strangely forgotten (!!) by the local press and never heard of again...
... see:
* Liberal health-care in Ontario: pay more, get less
* A year later, Liberal Jim Bradley still secretive about high death-rate in his government-funded hospital
* Blood-stained hospital curtains can't hide Liberal health-care neglect
* Niagara Health System second-highest deficit in Ontario, third-highest death-rate in Canada
* Liberals force state-run health-monopoly cuts throughout Ontario
* Over 500 C. difficile deaths in their state-run health monopoly, yet Liberals refuse investigation
Read all the above and weep.
And also read: Pressing hard, or hardly pressing, for more Niagara long-term care beds
... and also read:
Hospital death rate in Liberal Jim Bradley's St.Catharines: third-worst in Canada, where I wrote:
"After CIHI released their mortality-rates report on Nov.29, 2007, revealing that St. Catharines General Hospital's death-rate was the third-worst of 85 Canadian hospitals studied, (excluding Quebec), the Liberals trotted out a smoke-and-mirror 'organizational review' of the NHS, but ignored the mortality-rate issue! Local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, who in opposition raised a stink about issues like gasoline prices, couldn't be bothered to raise a stink about this health-care embarrassment in his own city. The Ombudsman's office does not have the mandate to oversee hospitals... unless the government allows the Ombudsman to do so. The Liberals along with Jim Bradley chose not to investigate the high NHS death rates. There was no direct call for the Ombudsman here; nor was there an appointment of a supervisor to the NHS (as occurred at other Ontario hospitals under scrutiny) to pave the way for the Ombudsman. I guess the death rates - at third-worst in the Canada - aren't yet high enough for the Liberals to warrant concern. As James Wallace wrote in the St. Catharines Standard, Dec.1, 2007, "mortality rates at the St. Catharines hospital, for example, are 35 per cent higher than the national average" ... yet, Liberal Jim Bradley didn't even bother to ask for an investigation, nor did Liberal Jim Bradley himself explain, this disturbing revelation. Maybe it's the Liberal way to meet Kyoto-CO2 emissions by controlling the population? High death rates - that's good, pro-environment 'green' policy, isn't it?
It is astounding how Liberal health care duplicity extends to making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for any outside body to investigate the government-run health monopoly, unless they first get PERMISSION from the government! This allows them to control and stage the timing of events. The 'system' has itself and its political masters to protect first; patients and their health-market-needs are not part of this monopoly's priorities. This system is first and foremost a social experiment. Patients are the political guinea pigs.
The reasons for the McCreith/Holmes health-care Charter challenge occurring become clearer when seen in context to this kind of lack of transparency, self-protection, and unresponsiveness surrounding institutionalized monopoly health-care in Ontario. This is the judicial by-pass patients have been forced into because legislated monopoly health-care has clogged Ontario's delivery arteries with socialism.
Patients stuck in this mess have no time for the promises of socialized medicine to kick in - the promises vanish as the failed realities of Smitherman's protected system set in."
Liberal health-monopolists - such as Jim Bradley - pretended that their local health-monopoly, the NHS, WAS NOT underfunded.
[...This the same smarmy Jim Bradley, by the way, who - while underfunding his health-care monopoly; while closing down two Niagara hospital emergency rooms; while forcing ambulances to carry patients to distant hospitals - had the utter audacity to smugly lecture us on Feb.4, 2010 that his "government budget has its limits" when it came to funding the millions in extra ambulance costs which came as a result of Bradley's own Liberal cuts... oh, the irony...!]
Yet - by May 2010 - somehow the Liberals' budget "limits" conveniently disappeared, and Bradley miraculously found $26 million to build a real-high-priority arts centre!! Talk about skewed Liberal priorities and deceptions...!]
Furthermore, McGuinty's Liberals DENIED any links between the CIHI-reported high death-rates and the obvious fact that the Liberal-controlled NHS health-monopoly was underfunded (as even Dr. Kitts had pointed out!!!) Admitting so would be admitting the McGuinty Liberal government's possibly criminal political complicity in the deaths.
And so Craitor popped in with his smokescreen 'review of NHS governance' - a tired form of which he is still pursuing to this day - instead of focusing on his own Liberal government's monopolist health-care demagoguery.
It is truly an astounding feat of Liberal health-care duplicity that the links between the NHS's high patient-death-rate and the Liberals' own health-care cuts remain hidden and unexplained, both by the government and the press, yet somehow, just after the CIHI revelations, the NHS was suddenly found to be in need of 'governance reviews' leading to Liberal-enforced 'HIP' plans, to ER closings, and to Sevenpifer's sacrificial firing - which we're told had nothing to do with the HIP!!
[Huh?! It didn't? Then, pray tell, what did?! We will never be told!]
After the firing, the remaining NHS board then re-iterated their commitment to carry on with the HIP, in a pathetically-hollow gambit to bestow legitimacy upon the HIP, as though its bastard paternity had nothing to do with the Liberals' health-care underfunding, or the subsequent unexplained CIHI-reported death-rates!
And so the institutionalized self-serving spin of McGuinty's Liberal health-monopoly-machine continues.
*
No comments:
Post a Comment