Canada's AGW stooge Stephane Bumbledore Dion, The Disciple of David Suzuki, is still spouting his shifty GreenFear climate socialism. How quaint. Too bad the St.Catharines Standard couldn't be bothered asking their local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley (umm: he's only Ontario's Environment Minister, btw...) about the year passed, and the year in store, and how the world will be destroyed if we don't obey the fearsome climatalarmist commands of Bumbledore!
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Saturday, December 31, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Heavy snow proves global-warming, except when lack of snow proves climate-change: ya got that?!
Remember, just back in Feb.2010, how the GreenFear TM crowd of global-warming climatalarmists were chortling about this during the Olympics? Funny, then, how they're not now talking about this! Lack of snow in certain regions of B.C. was a highpoint for the smug Greensheviks; to them, an obvious ominous sign of climate catastrophe which could only be stopped by Jim Bradley-style climat-olitical TM socialist solutions. But, now, with heavy snow and avalanche warnings, the GreenFear silence is deafening.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Niagara's Top News Story of 2011: how the St.Catharines Standard aided and abetted Jim Bradley during Niagara's Liberal Summer of C.diff Death
Further to my earlier post:
It's officially a pathetic tragi-comedy: Health care is the top story of the year, the "Newsmaker of the Year", as the Dec.28, 2011 St.Catharines Standard proclaimed; yet of course, local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, whose government created the LHIN's which forced the HIP cuts onto the NHS, was not even mentioned.
What else is new from Niagara's oldest Bradley-butt-wiping rag of record?
Yep: the front-page story in the Dec.28, 2011 Standard (written by "Standard Staff", under the headline "Niagara Health System dominated headlines mostly for wrong reasons") noted that "37 patients with hospital-associated C.difficile infections died" in Niagara...
(...in Bradley's Liberal-run health monopoly; you know, the one Good Ole Jimmy [suddenly] has nothing to do with...!)
...yet ...uh... because Jim Bradley has nothing to with it, the Standard, therefore (...it all makes sense, really...) has never carried an interview with their own secretive local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley about these deaths!!
See: it does makes sense: had a Conservative been the MPP during Niagara's Summer of C.diff Death, the Standard would have been working overtime devoting reams of editions dedicated to the story, scrutinizing its part-and-parcel politics...
(...btw: it wasn't even clear in this Standard story what exactly they meant about the NHS being in the headlines (...mostly their and NTW's headlines...) for the "wrong reasons"; the mysterious "Standard staff" writers did not say what the "right reasons" would have been. The headline just doesn't make sense in context to their story. Over 3 dozen C. diff patients died in Niagara - were we supposed to pretend that this WASN'T newsworthy??)
It's just that easy for Jim Bradley to vanish.
And it's just that easy for the St.Catharines Standard to act as Jim Bradley's enablers; protectively, sensitively, carefully and strategically looking the other way when it comes to analyzing Precious Ole Jim.
Score another wrong-not-righted by Wendy Metcalfe's unofficial Niagara Liberal Propaganda Unit.
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...and, no, Bolichowski's year-end-story "Bradley sees brighter times ahead", tucked into the Dec.31, 2011 Standard, was not an interview, but simply stenography sans analysis - typical Standard regurgitated stuff, almost election-style friendly fodder, an 'atta-boy' gift of enablement from the Standard to Jimmy. Whatever Ole Brighter Times Jimmy spouted, the Standard gobbled it up.
Bolichowski didn't bother asking Jim Bradley how many C. diff deaths could have been prevented in Niagara in 2011, had Bradley's secretive lying Liberals not quashed a public C. difficile inquiry in 2008!
Gosh: Jeff didn't even bother to go off-script and ask Jim Bradley (Ontario's Alberta-hatin' climatalarmist Environment Minister ...oops, pardon... Kyodiot) whether he's a Chiquita or a Dole banana man!
See the Mobil ad near the Jimmy-fawning story?! Ironic placement, eh, considering how Jimmy hates oil! ...and doctors ...and truth...
*
It's officially a pathetic tragi-comedy: Health care is the top story of the year, the "Newsmaker of the Year", as the Dec.28, 2011 St.Catharines Standard proclaimed; yet of course, local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, whose government created the LHIN's which forced the HIP cuts onto the NHS, was not even mentioned.
What else is new from Niagara's oldest Bradley-butt-wiping rag of record?
Yep: the front-page story in the Dec.28, 2011 Standard (written by "Standard Staff", under the headline "Niagara Health System dominated headlines mostly for wrong reasons") noted that "37 patients with hospital-associated C.difficile infections died" in Niagara...
(...in Bradley's Liberal-run health monopoly; you know, the one Good Ole Jimmy [suddenly] has nothing to do with...!)
...yet ...uh... because Jim Bradley has nothing to with it, the Standard, therefore (...it all makes sense, really...) has never carried an interview with their own secretive local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley about these deaths!!
See: it does makes sense: had a Conservative been the MPP during Niagara's Summer of C.diff Death, the Standard would have been working overtime devoting reams of editions dedicated to the story, scrutinizing its part-and-parcel politics...
(...btw: it wasn't even clear in this Standard story what exactly they meant about the NHS being in the headlines (...mostly their and NTW's headlines...) for the "wrong reasons"; the mysterious "Standard staff" writers did not say what the "right reasons" would have been. The headline just doesn't make sense in context to their story. Over 3 dozen C. diff patients died in Niagara - were we supposed to pretend that this WASN'T newsworthy??)
It's just that easy for Jim Bradley to vanish.
And it's just that easy for the St.Catharines Standard to act as Jim Bradley's enablers; protectively, sensitively, carefully and strategically looking the other way when it comes to analyzing Precious Ole Jim.
Score another wrong-not-righted by Wendy Metcalfe's unofficial Niagara Liberal Propaganda Unit.
*
Bolichowski didn't bother asking Jim Bradley how many C. diff deaths could have been prevented in Niagara in 2011, had Bradley's secretive lying Liberals not quashed a public C. difficile inquiry in 2008!
Gosh: Jeff didn't even bother to go off-script and ask Jim Bradley (Ontario's Alberta-hatin' climatalarmist E
See the Mobil ad near the Jimmy-fawning story?! Ironic placement, eh, considering how Jimmy hates oil! ...and doctors ...and truth...
*
Canada's Cagey Climatologist David Phillips teases about climate change
Loved that nice, sustained pile of GreenFear propaganda which was peddled at around 7:18 pm EST, Dec.28, 2011, on Buffalo's 970 AM, on the Gwen Ifill hosted Newshour. Climate change - man made - was not even challenged by those NPR "reporters". This is the kind of climate fear propaganda which Jim Bradley needs to hear more of in Canada!
Speaking of Good Ole Jimmy - once again, the St.Catharines Standard carried another of those always-funny Cagey Climatologist David 'maybe/maybe not/I dunno' Phillips' weather stories [where some reporter is sent in to decipher what Phillips says, and then try to spin some climate-change innuendo out of it], and once again, Jim Bradley (aka Ontario's Environment Minister!!) was not mentioned.
Ray Spiteri tried that same dance with Phillips a coupla days ago in the Standard; now, in the Dec.28, 2011 Standard, Don Fraser was sent in to do his best to somehow prove the fearsome existence of man-made climate change by cobbling together a string of David 'it's a crapshoot of fits and fickles' Phillips' scat-like climatological observations.
Yet, dammit - as Spiteri had found out - Cagey Climatologist Phillips came so close with his climate-fear innuendo, but couldn't actually give Fraser the smoking climate money shot, which would prove once and for all the existence of man-made climate change (or 'global-warming', or 'unprecedented-extreme-weather-events', or whatever the GreenFear industry's euphemistic-terminology-du jour for climate-socialism is).
Phillips teased and toyed with Fraser and led Fraser to the loquacious brink of climactic climatic release, but, dammit - pulled out just shy of actually saying that the Planet is in Peril, and that Jim Bradley is right, and that the Earth will be flooded as it dries up, and that the polar bears will drown as they're frying...
No, Fraser didn't get satisfaction from Canada's Cunningly Cagey Climatologist David Phillips. Fraser and his frustrated readers were left blueballed and breathless, having come so close to proving their socialist doomsday climate nirvana.
We don't even know whether Fraser had even bothered to come right out and ask Phillips outright for the definitive proof of man-made climate change; at least Spiteri made it look as if he had begged. But, although both Fraser and Spiteri dealt with the Cagey Climatologist, they also both completely ignored the One Man In All Of Liberal Ontario Who Knows All About Climate: Good Ole Jim Jimmy J.J. James Bradley!!
As with Spiteri, and countless previous lemmings who were sent to uphold the climate fear tradition, Fraser also did not dare bother to approach Climate Change GreenFear Chief Jim Bradley for the definitive proof of AGW. Strangely, Fraser didn't bother to provide readers with any reaction from Jim Bradley to Phillips' comments!
Perhaps the Standard's boss Wendy Metcalfe saw no wrongs here which needed righting, and ordered reporters such as Fraser not to contact Ontario's Environment Minister Jim Bradley, when her newspaper is writing stories desperately trying to peddle climate fear.
Or, maybe these "reporters" are protecting Jim Bradley on their own, and Wendy doesn't mind.
*
Speaking of Good Ole Jimmy - once again, the St.Catharines Standard carried another of those always-funny Cagey Climatologist David 'maybe/maybe not/I dunno' Phillips' weather stories [where some reporter is sent in to decipher what Phillips says, and then try to spin some climate-change innuendo out of it], and once again, Jim Bradley (aka Ontario's Environment Minister!!) was not mentioned.
Ray Spiteri tried that same dance with Phillips a coupla days ago in the Standard; now, in the Dec.28, 2011 Standard, Don Fraser was sent in to do his best to somehow prove the fearsome existence of man-made climate change by cobbling together a string of David 'it's a crapshoot of fits and fickles' Phillips' scat-like climatological observations.
Yet, dammit - as Spiteri had found out - Cagey Climatologist Phillips came so close with his climate-fear innuendo, but couldn't actually give Fraser the smoking climate money shot, which would prove once and for all the existence of man-made climate change (or 'global-warming', or 'unprecedented-extreme-weather-events', or whatever the GreenFear industry's euphemistic-terminology-du jour for climate-socialism is).
Phillips teased and toyed with Fraser and led Fraser to the loquacious brink of climactic climatic release, but, dammit - pulled out just shy of actually saying that the Planet is in Peril, and that Jim Bradley is right, and that the Earth will be flooded as it dries up, and that the polar bears will drown as they're frying...
No, Fraser didn't get satisfaction from Canada's Cunningly Cagey Climatologist David Phillips. Fraser and his frustrated readers were left blueballed and breathless, having come so close to proving their socialist doomsday climate nirvana.
We don't even know whether Fraser had even bothered to come right out and ask Phillips outright for the definitive proof of man-made climate change; at least Spiteri made it look as if he had begged. But, although both Fraser and Spiteri dealt with the Cagey Climatologist, they also both completely ignored the One Man In All Of Liberal Ontario Who Knows All About Climate: Good Ole Jim Jimmy J.J. James Bradley!!
As with Spiteri, and countless previous lemmings who were sent to uphold the climate fear tradition, Fraser also did not dare bother to approach Climate Change GreenFear Chief Jim Bradley for the definitive proof of AGW. Strangely, Fraser didn't bother to provide readers with any reaction from Jim Bradley to Phillips' comments!
Perhaps the Standard's boss Wendy Metcalfe saw no wrongs here which needed righting, and ordered reporters such as Fraser not to contact Ontario's Environment Minister Jim Bradley, when her newspaper is writing stories desperately trying to peddle climate fear.
Or, maybe these "reporters" are protecting Jim Bradley on their own, and Wendy doesn't mind.
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Health-care status-quo is working just fine for secretive Liberal Jim Bradley!
Further to this previous post...
Fred G. Peet wrote in "Health-care status quo not working" (National Post, Dec.28, 2011):
"Re: In Defence Of Public Health Care, letter to the editor, Dec. 23.
In defending the current one-payer medical system in Canada, Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, talks about medical care for the poor. However, she avoids mentioning the person who has carefully put money aside for a medical rainy day only to find that they are unable to spend it on their own care when that rainy day arrives, thanks to the Canada Health Act. We thus have the absurd situation that a person can spend their own money on health care for their dog or cat but not for themselves.
Second, she claims that choice means fend for yourself. She avoids raising the possibility that a government monopoly may not be the most efficient way of delivering health care, even within a singlepayer system.
Lastly, she refers to medical public policy being based on research and evidence. She ignores the public policy that reduced the number of student seats in medical schools in the mid-1990s, leading to today's current doctor shortage.
It is time to fix the Canadian medical system, in spite of the views of Ms. Silas, and that fixing can begin with an overhaul of the Canada Health Act."
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The health monopoly's workin' fine, if ya ask Ontario Liberal MPP Jim Bradley [...well, ya gotta find Secretive Ole Jimmy first, though...]
Why, 37 patients died during two C.difficile outbreaks in Bradley's own region, yet Ole Jim had nothin' to say about it!!
And better yet, no-one from the press even bothered to ask Jimmy about it!!
How about that, eh?!!
The health-care status-quo sure is working for Jim... bigtime... with blindfolds on...
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Fred G. Peet wrote in "Health-care status quo not working" (National Post, Dec.28, 2011):
"Re: In Defence Of Public Health Care, letter to the editor, Dec. 23.
In defending the current one-payer medical system in Canada, Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, talks about medical care for the poor. However, she avoids mentioning the person who has carefully put money aside for a medical rainy day only to find that they are unable to spend it on their own care when that rainy day arrives, thanks to the Canada Health Act. We thus have the absurd situation that a person can spend their own money on health care for their dog or cat but not for themselves.
Second, she claims that choice means fend for yourself. She avoids raising the possibility that a government monopoly may not be the most efficient way of delivering health care, even within a singlepayer system.
Lastly, she refers to medical public policy being based on research and evidence. She ignores the public policy that reduced the number of student seats in medical schools in the mid-1990s, leading to today's current doctor shortage.
It is time to fix the Canadian medical system, in spite of the views of Ms. Silas, and that fixing can begin with an overhaul of the Canada Health Act."
*
The health monopoly's workin' fine, if ya ask Ontario Liberal MPP Jim Bradley [...well, ya gotta find Secretive Ole Jimmy first, though...]
Why, 37 patients died during two C.difficile outbreaks in Bradley's own region, yet Ole Jim had nothin' to say about it!!
And better yet, no-one from the press even bothered to ask Jimmy about it!!
How about that, eh?!!
The health-care status-quo sure is working for Jim... bigtime... with blindfolds on...
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Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Looks like Ontario's Environment Minister Jim Bradley has nothing to do with the environment!
Interesting article by Greg Van Moorsel in the Dec.27, 2011 St.Catharines Standard, "Ontario's dirt hides behind oilsands', which points out that McGuinty's Liberals should be thankful that Alberta's oil industry is supporting Ontario economically, while at the same time also taking the spotlight away from McGuinty-run Ontario's own abysmal environmental record (as Ontario's environment commissioner Gord Miller had recently reported)
Despite adopting a GreenFear-fallacy within his own story (peddling unsubstantiated links to "climate-warming greenhouse gases") Van Moorsel nevertheless makes some good points about how Alberta gets vilified, yet Ontario gets a free environmental pass.
The astounding thing about this report - coming as it does from Sun Media's own national comment editor, and appearing in Wendy Metcalfe's notoriously faux-'wrong-righting' St.Catharines Standard - is that - once again! - there was no analysis of, no comments from, no reactions from, no mention whatsoever about St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim James J.J. Bradley - who is Ontario's Environment Minister!!!
There was nothing at all in this story from or about Jim Bradley - a TWO-TIME ONTARIO LIBERAL environment minister, no less!!!!
Why was Good Ole Jim Bradley, the Liberal Kyodiot who practically gave birth to Kyoto in Ontario a decade ago, ever-so-conveniently missing in this report?!
Don't Wendy Metcalfe or Greg Van Moorsel know who Jim Bradley is, or what he's (not) done??! hahaha.
And Kinsella calls Sun Media 'right-wing'!! hahaha
*
Despite adopting a GreenFear-fallacy within his own story (peddling unsubstantiated links to "climate-warming greenhouse gases") Van Moorsel nevertheless makes some good points about how Alberta gets vilified, yet Ontario gets a free environmental pass.
The astounding thing about this report - coming as it does from Sun Media's own national comment editor, and appearing in Wendy Metcalfe's notoriously faux-'wrong-righting' St.Catharines Standard - is that - once again! - there was no analysis of, no comments from, no reactions from, no mention whatsoever about St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim James J.J. Bradley - who is Ontario's Environment Minister!!!
There was nothing at all in this story from or about Jim Bradley - a TWO-TIME ONTARIO LIBERAL environment minister, no less!!!!
Why was Good Ole Jim Bradley, the Liberal Kyodiot who practically gave birth to Kyoto in Ontario a decade ago, ever-so-conveniently missing in this report?!
Don't Wendy Metcalfe or Greg Van Moorsel know who Jim Bradley is, or what he's (not) done??! hahaha.
And Kinsella calls Sun Media 'right-wing'!! hahaha
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Monday, December 26, 2011
The St.Catharines Standard peddles more GreenFear
Of course, Wendy Metcalfe's wrong righters at the Standard printed Burnett's column without any scrutiny regarding the accompanying photo's outrageous claims.
One great GreenFear doozy was the scary photo of the Earth in some kind of fearsome brown tinge, with this classic smelly 'piece of Justin Trudeau' caption: "Between global warming and rapid change in climate, we are seeing a rapid alteration of our biosphere alongside climatic catastrophes".
Now, that's some Good Ole GreenFear-mongering for you: scared yet, that Armageddon's gonna getcha?!
Read that ridiculous St.Catharines Standard bullsh!t once more, just for fun!! It's almost as if Wendy's Standard is trying to pull off a parody here, and that the fear mongering hyperbolic captions below the photos are actually a spoof, not supposed to be real!!!
It's funny, because Wendy Metcalfe's St.Catharines Standard editors never really provide any evidence to justify the GreenFear which they have just published. Just saying it is proof in itself: after all, AGW is 'all settled', so, how can anyone question it?!!!
If one reads Burnett's story, it's not at all clear who actually makes this claim: Burnett's column doesn't actually make the claim which accompanies the story's photo. Burnett writes of subject Larry Hall mentioning "climate change", but nowhere in the story does Burnett actually write that Hall himself believes it; Burnett reports Hall only saying that others - those who have been GreenFeared into buying his disaster shelters - do; and, Burnett shows us that Hall is more than happy to profit from their fears.
Burnett, in the body of his story, doesn't actually peddle the doomsday scenario, yet, he doesn't question it, either: so it is not clear who, then, actually made the claims in the photo captions which accompany the Standard's story! Did QMI agency writer Burnett also choose the photos and write the captions, or were these inserted and editorialized by others?
Will Standard boss Metcalfe bother to explain why the photo-caption claims which came alongside the story, were not actually part of the story? Jim Bradley, Stephane Dion, and David Suzuki salute you, Wendy.
Wendy could have assigned some other reporter - maybe Spiteri - to examine the claims attached to Burnett's story, or the Standard's manipulative editorialization of Burnett's story, by referring to Ontario's own Blessed Environment Minister Jim Bradley, for final confirmation that the planet is indeed in 'catastrophic biospherical' meltdown, as Wendy Metcalfe's Standard has actually reported.
Bradley, Ontario's Environmental Sage, could have easily - once and for all - proven that 'the Planet is in Peril', and, that the Standard is not peddling a smelly 'piece of Justin Trudeau', but is printing true scientific facts: Jim Bradley, after all, knows all about the... ahem... reality of global warming.
Gawrsh: all Wendy - or Thane Burnett, or Spiteri - had to do, was call Good Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, who is always available (...hahaha...) and is always eager (...bwaahaha...) to publicly show the definitive scientific evidence, which only he knows, which proves anthropogenic global warming and climate change!! Why wasn't Environment Minister Bradley consulted?!
Although 2011 'should have been the end' of the St.Catharines Standard's GreenFear peddling, it's apparent that the end of Kyoto has not brought about an end to the Standard's penchant for climate deception.
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Jim Bradley's non-reaction to auditor McCarter's report
Have the St.Catharines Standard's Wendy Metcalfe or Niagara This Week's Mike Williscraft bothered - yet - to ask local Niagara Liberal MPP Jim Bradley for his comments about this CBC story, where the "Opposition suggests Ontario's Liberal government may be using a community grant program as a slush fund to reward friends and supporters, just like it did with grants for multicultural organizations four years ago."
Scandal... what scandal? Questionable Trillium grants? How dare ya ask secretive Ole Jim Bradley about Liberal accountability? Righting-wrongs... huh? Why should anyone demand that Liberal Jim Bradley provide his detailed local response to the auditor's report?! What nerve...
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Scandal... what scandal? Questionable Trillium grants? How dare ya ask secretive Ole Jim Bradley about Liberal accountability? Righting-wrongs... huh? Why should anyone demand that Liberal Jim Bradley provide his detailed local response to the auditor's report?! What nerve...
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Who is responsible for Tommy Douglas' negligence?
Further to this previous post...
Sidney Braun wrote in "National spirit not part of health care" (National Post, Dec.24, 2011):
Re: In Defence Of Public Health Care, letter to the editor, Dec. 23. Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, fails to recognize her own "evidence-empty" (and very tired) arguments and alludes to facts and reasons, but lists none. Funding for health care is already divided between the public, insurance and private/corporate purse. Health care isn't about national spirit - it is about delivering quality care to those who need it. The problem is not in the funding but rather in the delivery, which is due to lack of accountability. Publicly funded and privately delivered health care is what we need to really ensure that quality care in a timely fashion is indeed provided for those who need it. If publicly funded and privately delivered care costs less, why is that not the Canadian way?
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Canada's reactionary political enforcers of status-quo health-care, and their sycophantic self-appointed higher-moral-standard-bearing symbionts, have a very comfortable monopoly they insist on protecting and propagating.
Isn't the argument now really about private-parallel, ie, privately-funded/privately delivered , NOT about publicly-funded/-privately-delivered ?!
The latter is essentially what we already have now.
This is about going beyond monopolist, state-controlled, single-payer health-care; it is about introducing privately-funded/privately delivered health care, in other words: non-state-funded health care, parallel with the state's public (but non-monopoly) care.
But it's not surprising that the status-quo-enforcing monopolists are still agitating even against relatively innocuous improvements within the publicly-funded/privately-delivered category.
Let's recall that reactionary Liberals even demonized their own health minister Pierre Pettigrew for daring to suggest that provinces in Canada should be allowed to mildly experiment with health care in the publicly-funded/privately-delivered realm!! (see here, pg.17-20) And the same reactionary leftists also demonized John Tory for essentially saying the same thing.
Neither Silas, nor Liberal monopolists such as Deb Matthews, nor Jim Bradley, nor Kim Craitor, have yet explained who is accountable for the deaths of dozens of C. diff victims in Niagara's McGuinty-run-public-health-monopoly this year.
No one's accountable when the state's monopolists are in charge.
*
see also here
*
Sidney Braun wrote in "National spirit not part of health care" (National Post, Dec.24, 2011):
Re: In Defence Of Public Health Care, letter to the editor, Dec. 23. Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, fails to recognize her own "evidence-empty" (and very tired) arguments and alludes to facts and reasons, but lists none. Funding for health care is already divided between the public, insurance and private/corporate purse. Health care isn't about national spirit - it is about delivering quality care to those who need it. The problem is not in the funding but rather in the delivery, which is due to lack of accountability. Publicly funded and privately delivered health care is what we need to really ensure that quality care in a timely fashion is indeed provided for those who need it. If publicly funded and privately delivered care costs less, why is that not the Canadian way?
*
Canada's reactionary political enforcers of status-quo health-care, and their sycophantic self-appointed higher-moral-standard-bearing symbionts, have a very comfortable monopoly they insist on protecting and propagating.
Isn't the argument now really about private-parallel, ie, privately-funded/privately delivered , NOT about publicly-funded/-privately-delivered ?!
The latter is essentially what we already have now.
This is about going beyond monopolist, state-controlled, single-payer health-care; it is about introducing privately-funded/privately delivered health care, in other words: non-state-funded health care, parallel with the state's public (but non-monopoly) care.
But it's not surprising that the status-quo-enforcing monopolists are still agitating even against relatively innocuous improvements within the publicly-funded/privately-delivered category.
Let's recall that reactionary Liberals even demonized their own health minister Pierre Pettigrew for daring to suggest that provinces in Canada should be allowed to mildly experiment with health care in the publicly-funded/privately-delivered realm!! (see here, pg.17-20) And the same reactionary leftists also demonized John Tory for essentially saying the same thing.
Neither Silas, nor Liberal monopolists such as Deb Matthews, nor Jim Bradley, nor Kim Craitor, have yet explained who is accountable for the deaths of dozens of C. diff victims in Niagara's McGuinty-run-public-health-monopoly this year.
No one's accountable when the state's monopolists are in charge.
*
see also here
*
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Tommy Douglas responsible for C.diff patient deaths
Lorne Gunter wrote in "Leaving Canada's health care myths behind" (National Post, Dec.21, 2011):
I was reading a fascinating piece on Canadians’ newfound national confidence in Maclean’s on Monday when a story moved on the newswires reporting that six of 10 provinces are unhappy with federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s new health-care transfer plans. It may be a bit of a stretch, but I think the two are related.
The contrast between the two shows how ordinary Canadians have escaped the insularity and smugness that have driven our elites’ image of Canada for at least four decades. No longer do we find it necessary to define ourselves through comparison with other countries, notably the United States, or by constantly reassuring ourselves that being a “soft power” makes us morally and intellectually superior.
Nicholas Kohler’s Maclean’s article claims Canadians are among the most optimistic people in the world about the future of their nation; 86% of us believe Canada is the greatest country in the world, 87% that it is the best place in the world in which to raise kids.
In a way, that’s not surprising. Majorities in most countries like to think their nation is best. But what makes it remarkable is how our sanguinity stacks up against that of other countries’ residents. Just 61% of Americans think the United States is the best place to bring up children, while 50% of Brits believe Canada is a better place for families than the U.K.
And while just 42% us of believe Canada’s best days lie in the future, rather than the past, that is considerably higher than the 36% of Americans who believe the same. Fifty-eight percent of the British are convinced their glory days are gone.
This new pride has been emerging for a while, but I think it broke through in a big way at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010. Athletically, we nearly won the thing outright. But it was culturally where we truly shone. The performers at the opening and closing ceremonies, and at various venues, were all world-class and all Canadian. But they didn’t make a big deal about being Canadian. They let their talent do the boasting.
The street parties were hip, the organization second-to-none. And we, as hosts, were neither apologetic about our success nor sneering about how this showed our way of doing things is ethically purer. We simply welcomed the world in, offered guests as good a party as they would find anywhere, then joined them in the fun.
That’s the new Canadian spirit.
Now contrast that with the way six of 10 provincial finance ministers reacted to Mr. Flaherty’s plan to solidify federal health-care transfers through 2024. The federal Finance Minister announced Monday that the federal government would continue to increase its annual health-care transfers to the provinces by 6% a year until 2017. By that year, Ottawa will be shipping the provinces about $38-billion annually to help pay for doctors, nurses, hospitals and medical equipment. Thereafter, the increases would be tied to economic growth (currently about 4%), but will never fall below 3%, no matter how bad the economy gets.
Admittedly, Ottawa sprang this “deal” on provincial governments without warning. The current 10-year health funding arrangement runs out in 2014 and the provinces had expected to have until then to make their case for more money. Mr. Flaherty and the Harper government were eager to prevent a lot of drama and political grandstanding, so they short-circuited the process.
Manitoba NDP Finance Minister Stan Struthers whined: “This is not fair, it is un-Canadian.” His Ontario counterpart, Dwight Duncan, mewled that Ottawa’s plan “destabilizes the federation” and puts at risk “access to quality health care, from sea to sea to sea, in French and English.” (Funny. I thought the point of the health-care system was to make Canadians well, not to promote bilingualism.)
Clearly many of our politicians haven’t caught on to the new confidence and independence most ordinary Canadians are feeling. Having emerged from the shadow of the United States, we no longer feel the need to define ourselves as a nation by claiming our health care is morally superior to theirs.
Provincial politicians, though, seem mired in the notion that our single-payer system is sacred. The only solution they can imagine for its shortcomings is more money from Ottawa, when what is really needed is for them to move on. Take the cash Mr. Flaherty is offering, experiment with new delivery models, permit Canadians greater health care choice and get with the new national spirit.
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In response to Gunter's above story, Linda Silas wrote "In defense of public health care" (Dec.23, 2011, National Post):
Re: Leaving Canada's Health-Care Myths Behind, Lorne Gunter, Dec. 21.
Lorne Gunter accuses provincial politicians of wanting to keep the single-payer health-care system for no particular reason. I am so tired of evidence-empty arguments calling for more corporate involvement in health care. Let's debate the merits of a single-payer public provider versus a parallel for-profit, based on fact and reason.
The national spirit that created medicare is one of a caring society, so that the sick and the poor do not have to worry that they will not get timely quality care because their health-care provider is working at the rich person's hospital.
Choice means fend for yourself and since when has that been our national spirit or even an option for those who want to see public policy based on research and evidence?
*
We're tired of an unaccountable Tommy Douglas recklessly staggering around Canada, killing patients at will, while forcing them into Silas's single-payer socialist nirvana. Silas isn't talking of 'public' health care, as the headline suggests, she is propagandizing about monopoly health care. Leftists like to use the term 'public', as it doesn't sound so authoritarian, though, of course, it is, seeing as it is being used as an euphemism for no-choice.
The public should be entitled to the health care of their choice.
Silas trots out the ole 'national spirit' canard (another example of Keith Martin's noted head-in-the-sand tactic) and can find no 'corporate reason' to show why Tommy Douglas' zombie killed some 40 C.diff patients in Niagara, despite all the phony promises, all the deceptive research, all the false assurances, all the incompetent unaccountability, in Niagara's 'poor people's' monopoly hospitals, run by monopolists Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor.
It's as if patients must first shove the Constitution and the Canada Health Act in front of the faces of these despotic agents of Tommy Douglas, for them to see that they have no right to force a statist health monopoly upon the public.
Choice does mean choice - but Silas has no idea of the concept: Silas' status-quo is despotism; is the demonization of choice; is the absence of choice; is forced dependence on the state, mandated by the state.
That's exactly what statist Liberals Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor want in Niagara, and exactly why - when their monopolist health charade goes haywire, and when they no can no longer slough off the blame on "harris" boogeymen, or on some fictitious 'privatization', or on some dreaded "Americanization" red-herring - they simply vanish with their rhetoric while Tommy's dead continue to pile up in Niagara.
Yeh... that's the ticket: Ole Tommy did it.
*
see also here; here
*
I was reading a fascinating piece on Canadians’ newfound national confidence in Maclean’s on Monday when a story moved on the newswires reporting that six of 10 provinces are unhappy with federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s new health-care transfer plans. It may be a bit of a stretch, but I think the two are related.
The contrast between the two shows how ordinary Canadians have escaped the insularity and smugness that have driven our elites’ image of Canada for at least four decades. No longer do we find it necessary to define ourselves through comparison with other countries, notably the United States, or by constantly reassuring ourselves that being a “soft power” makes us morally and intellectually superior.
Nicholas Kohler’s Maclean’s article claims Canadians are among the most optimistic people in the world about the future of their nation; 86% of us believe Canada is the greatest country in the world, 87% that it is the best place in the world in which to raise kids.
In a way, that’s not surprising. Majorities in most countries like to think their nation is best. But what makes it remarkable is how our sanguinity stacks up against that of other countries’ residents. Just 61% of Americans think the United States is the best place to bring up children, while 50% of Brits believe Canada is a better place for families than the U.K.
And while just 42% us of believe Canada’s best days lie in the future, rather than the past, that is considerably higher than the 36% of Americans who believe the same. Fifty-eight percent of the British are convinced their glory days are gone.
This new pride has been emerging for a while, but I think it broke through in a big way at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010. Athletically, we nearly won the thing outright. But it was culturally where we truly shone. The performers at the opening and closing ceremonies, and at various venues, were all world-class and all Canadian. But they didn’t make a big deal about being Canadian. They let their talent do the boasting.
The street parties were hip, the organization second-to-none. And we, as hosts, were neither apologetic about our success nor sneering about how this showed our way of doing things is ethically purer. We simply welcomed the world in, offered guests as good a party as they would find anywhere, then joined them in the fun.
That’s the new Canadian spirit.
Now contrast that with the way six of 10 provincial finance ministers reacted to Mr. Flaherty’s plan to solidify federal health-care transfers through 2024. The federal Finance Minister announced Monday that the federal government would continue to increase its annual health-care transfers to the provinces by 6% a year until 2017. By that year, Ottawa will be shipping the provinces about $38-billion annually to help pay for doctors, nurses, hospitals and medical equipment. Thereafter, the increases would be tied to economic growth (currently about 4%), but will never fall below 3%, no matter how bad the economy gets.
Admittedly, Ottawa sprang this “deal” on provincial governments without warning. The current 10-year health funding arrangement runs out in 2014 and the provinces had expected to have until then to make their case for more money. Mr. Flaherty and the Harper government were eager to prevent a lot of drama and political grandstanding, so they short-circuited the process.
Manitoba NDP Finance Minister Stan Struthers whined: “This is not fair, it is un-Canadian.” His Ontario counterpart, Dwight Duncan, mewled that Ottawa’s plan “destabilizes the federation” and puts at risk “access to quality health care, from sea to sea to sea, in French and English.” (Funny. I thought the point of the health-care system was to make Canadians well, not to promote bilingualism.)
Clearly many of our politicians haven’t caught on to the new confidence and independence most ordinary Canadians are feeling. Having emerged from the shadow of the United States, we no longer feel the need to define ourselves as a nation by claiming our health care is morally superior to theirs.
Provincial politicians, though, seem mired in the notion that our single-payer system is sacred. The only solution they can imagine for its shortcomings is more money from Ottawa, when what is really needed is for them to move on. Take the cash Mr. Flaherty is offering, experiment with new delivery models, permit Canadians greater health care choice and get with the new national spirit.
*
In response to Gunter's above story, Linda Silas wrote "In defense of public health care" (Dec.23, 2011, National Post):
Re: Leaving Canada's Health-Care Myths Behind, Lorne Gunter, Dec. 21.
Lorne Gunter accuses provincial politicians of wanting to keep the single-payer health-care system for no particular reason. I am so tired of evidence-empty arguments calling for more corporate involvement in health care. Let's debate the merits of a single-payer public provider versus a parallel for-profit, based on fact and reason.
The national spirit that created medicare is one of a caring society, so that the sick and the poor do not have to worry that they will not get timely quality care because their health-care provider is working at the rich person's hospital.
Choice means fend for yourself and since when has that been our national spirit or even an option for those who want to see public policy based on research and evidence?
*
We're tired of an unaccountable Tommy Douglas recklessly staggering around Canada, killing patients at will, while forcing them into Silas's single-payer socialist nirvana. Silas isn't talking of 'public' health care, as the headline suggests, she is propagandizing about monopoly health care. Leftists like to use the term 'public', as it doesn't sound so authoritarian, though, of course, it is, seeing as it is being used as an euphemism for no-choice.
The public should be entitled to the health care of their choice.
Silas trots out the ole 'national spirit' canard (another example of Keith Martin's noted head-in-the-sand tactic) and can find no 'corporate reason' to show why Tommy Douglas' zombie killed some 40 C.diff patients in Niagara, despite all the phony promises, all the deceptive research, all the false assurances, all the incompetent unaccountability, in Niagara's 'poor people's' monopoly hospitals, run by monopolists Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor.
It's as if patients must first shove the Constitution and the Canada Health Act in front of the faces of these despotic agents of Tommy Douglas, for them to see that they have no right to force a statist health monopoly upon the public.
Choice does mean choice - but Silas has no idea of the concept: Silas' status-quo is despotism; is the demonization of choice; is the absence of choice; is forced dependence on the state, mandated by the state.
That's exactly what statist Liberals Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor want in Niagara, and exactly why - when their monopolist health charade goes haywire, and when they no can no longer slough off the blame on "harris" boogeymen, or on some fictitious 'privatization', or on some dreaded "Americanization" red-herring - they simply vanish with their rhetoric while Tommy's dead continue to pile up in Niagara.
Yeh... that's the ticket: Ole Tommy did it.
*
see also here; here
*
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Say whaaat? Environment Canada climatologist David Phillips can't prove "climate change"?
Looks as if Ray Spiteri (in the Dec.22, 2011 St.Catharines Standard story "White Christmas? Dream on") engaged Environment Canada's senior climatologist David Phillips to determine whether a not-yet-snowy December in Niagara is proof of "climate change".
Spiteri reported Phillips' reply: ""Climate Change? Could be" said Phillips "We don't know what it is.""
Pardon?!
"We don't know" ???
Yikes... that's probably not the answer which the St.Catharines Standard was really hoping for.
[...see some of my favourite Cagey Climatologist David Phillips stories here; here; here; here !]
Spiteri didn't bother to ask Phillips about the 'toxicity to The Planet' of the heat-trapping water-vapour cloud which Niagara Falls has been constantly releasing for some 12,000 years! [Whaaaaat? Whazzzat 'bout? Whaddaya mean..?]
Why didn't Spiteri or his Standard editors also provide readers with Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's response to Phillips' "we don't know" answer?
Did Spiteri even bother to ask Niagara's Greatest GreenFear-monger, Jim 'Kyodiot' Bradley, who, by the way, is Ontario's Environment Minister?! You'd think that Bradley would have a completely opposite point of view than Phillips on the matter!
Jim Bradley and his entire Liberal party believe that the causes of, the existence of, and the political solutions to, the issue of "climate change" HAVE ALL BEEN SETTLED!!! Spiteri surely knows about the Liberals' GreenFear peddling, doesn't he?!
Bradley personally claims that man made climate change/global warming is real, and, obviously, Bradley's been blabbing that way for at least twenty years. Of course, Bradley has never provided any specific scientific basis for his claims, going back to at least 1991. The St.Catharines Standard, meanwhile, has gladly never asked. [see: Liberal MPP Jim Bradley shoots crap]
Bradley most certainly claims to believe that he knows what climate change is - though strangely, a secretive Jim Bradley has never publicly revealed his supporting 'scientific basis' for his climate change beliefs - which he clearly must have already had twenty years ago!
Reporter Ray Spiteri had the opportune time to ask Jim Bradley all about his Liberal global warming AGW "evidence"; all about ClimateGate (one and two); all about the Mann-made hockey stick climate hoax; all about the dismantling in Durban of Bradley's GreenFear weapon Kyoto, and why Bradley (McGuinty's supposed environment minister) did nothing about it; and... oh, yeah... about Phillips' 'we don't know' about climate change comment.
Conveniently, the wrong-righters at the St.Catharines Standard only brought us half the story.
There are a lot of other GreenFear-mongers in Niagara - why didn't Spiteri talk to any of them, either, so they could, once and for all, prove that Phillips is just 'full of steamy Justin Trudeau'?
*
Spiteri reported Phillips' reply: ""Climate Change? Could be" said Phillips "We don't know what it is.""
Pardon?!
"We don't know" ???
Yikes... that's probably not the answer which the St.Catharines Standard was really hoping for.
[...see some of my favourite Cagey Climatologist David Phillips stories here; here; here; here !]
Spiteri didn't bother to ask Phillips about the 'toxicity to The Planet' of the heat-trapping water-vapour cloud which Niagara Falls has been constantly releasing for some 12,000 years! [Whaaaaat? Whazzzat 'bout? Whaddaya mean..?]
Why didn't Spiteri or his Standard editors also provide readers with Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's response to Phillips' "we don't know" answer?
Did Spiteri even bother to ask Niagara's Greatest GreenFear-monger, Jim 'Kyodiot' Bradley, who, by the way, is Ontario's Environment Minister?! You'd think that Bradley would have a completely opposite point of view than Phillips on the matter!
Jim Bradley and his entire Liberal party believe that the causes of, the existence of, and the political solutions to, the issue of "climate change" HAVE ALL BEEN SETTLED!!! Spiteri surely knows about the Liberals' GreenFear peddling, doesn't he?!
Bradley personally claims that man made climate change/global warming is real, and, obviously, Bradley's been blabbing that way for at least twenty years. Of course, Bradley has never provided any specific scientific basis for his claims, going back to at least 1991. The St.Catharines Standard, meanwhile, has gladly never asked. [see: Liberal MPP Jim Bradley shoots crap]
Bradley most certainly claims to believe that he knows what climate change is - though strangely, a secretive Jim Bradley has never publicly revealed his supporting 'scientific basis' for his climate change beliefs - which he clearly must have already had twenty years ago!
Reporter Ray Spiteri had the opportune time to ask Jim Bradley all about his Liberal global warming AGW "evidence"; all about ClimateGate (one and two); all about the Mann-made hockey stick climate hoax; all about the dismantling in Durban of Bradley's GreenFear weapon Kyoto, and why Bradley (McGuinty's supposed environment minister) did nothing about it; and... oh, yeah... about Phillips' 'we don't know' about climate change comment.
Conveniently, the wrong-righters at the St.Catharines Standard only brought us half the story.
There are a lot of other GreenFear-mongers in Niagara - why didn't Spiteri talk to any of them, either, so they could, once and for all, prove that Phillips is just 'full of steamy Justin Trudeau'?
*
Liberal Dwight Duncan's tiresome health-accord fear-mongering
Further to my previous post...
Debt-ridden Liberal Dwight Duncan hasn't been able to spin the health-transfer accord the way McGuinty's greasy Liberals had wanted him to. Here are some of the perspectives on monopolist-pusher Duncan's irresponsible recent foot-stamping and deceptive fear-mongering:
On Dec.20, 2011 Sun Media's Mark Dunn reported in "Ont., Que. need to fix health system or feel the pain: Expert":
"Ontario and Quebec are the most vocal critics of a new health funding formula because their own budgets are hemorrhaging red ink, says an expert on finances from the western home of medicare.
"It's much easier to blame the federal government for their problems than to actually sit down and address their own situation, their own spending," says Janice MacKinnon, a former finance minister in Roy Romanow's NDP government.
Now a University of Saskatchewan fiscal policy professor, MacKinnon says Canada's two largest provinces are failing at righting their economies.
She described Monday's no-strings deal as "very fair" and "reasonable" compared to the present transfer agreement that calls for annual transfers of 6% - a figure Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says is unsustainable.
Ontario and Quebec finance ministers hyperventilated over the deal that gives the provinces five years to fix their systems before the new funding arrangement kicks in - one that ties funding to GDP growth and never slips below 3%.
Both provinces are broke and the economic outlook is grim - hence the provinces wagging a finger on one hand and stretching out the other hand for more cash.
MacKinnon says the 2004 original deal was flawed from the outset because the biggest chunk went to salaries, with some of it used to lower wait times, but not to the broader issue of fixing the health system.
With an aging population and all that comes with that demographic, MacKinnon says provinces are out of touch with health needs and service delivery.
She points to the cost of MRIs, hip and knee replacements and other ailments that develop with age. A Saskatchewan study suggested millions in savings if some of those procedures were conducted outside hospitals.
"You really have to get serious about changing your system to make it more affordable," she said".
*
Note that the same above story was also carried in the Dec.21, 2011 St.Catharines Standard, buried back on page B6, but did not include the last four paragraphs!! Why - was there something MacKinnon said which would upset secretive Niagara health monopoly pusher Jim Bradley? Like that Bradley's and Kim Craitor's monopolist Liberals "are out of touch with health needs and service delivery"??
MacKinnon - and she's an NDP eer! - is saying that Flaherty's deal was very fair and reasonable - yet, Jim Bradley's and Kim Craitor's Liberal status-quo-pushing, health-care-monopoly-enforcing statists are already moaning and whining about it. As is now usually the case, the St.Catharines Standard hasn't yet bothered to interview their local MPP, Jim Bradley, about the new health accord!
Janice MacKinnon, writing in the National Post back on July 14, 2004 noted:
“One of the greatest threats to medicare is posed by those who cling tenaciously to the status-quo and claim they are defending Tommy Douglas’s vision of medicare by doing so. Too often in politics, what we cherish most we inadvertently destroy by believing that protecting something means freezing it in time, when in fact protecting it may require dramatic change”. (see here, pg. 30)
*
On Dec.20, 2011, the CBC reported on Dwight Doofus Duncan's deceptive Liberal fear-mongering claim that "health cuts will hurt hospitals"; to which here were some of the reader's replies:
EdmundBurke wrote:
EVER INCREASING HEALTH CARE COSTS UNSTAINABLE
Linking health care increases to the GDP is a pragmatic, bold, fiscally responsible alteration in the right direction; however, an even more contemplative small-c fiscally responsible conservative modification that would be attentive to the $580 billion debt and the $30 billion deficit would be to implement it immediately. Implementing it in 2017/18 will make it more difficult to eliminate the deficit, and would save billions in interest payments.
It's nauseating to listen to the fiscally unaccountable extremist on the far-left moronically screaming about limiting the increments in health care spending. Socialist provincial functionaries like Ontario's Duncan, who refuses to make any significant cuts to eliminate his $16 billion deficit must analyze their own socialistic-inspired, financially moronic budgets that are spending their provinces into insolvency.
A genuine small-c fiscal conservative would begin the process to re-write the Canada Health Act that currently places control of our top-down, government-rationed system in hands central planning, incompetent bureaucrats.
Government must welcome inclusion by the more efficient private sector, or permit the provinces to compete by experimenting to uncover cost savings. Health care cost $135 billion a year that are filtered through layers of expensive and wasteful bureaucracy before any of it ever gets to the actual health-care providers. Since 1998 federal health transfers to the provinces increased at an average annual rate of over 10%. Total health spending accounted for 11.4 per cent of Canada's GDP in 2009 compared with an average of 9.5 per cent across OECD countries. Canada's health spending per person was valued at $4,363 U.S., with the OECD average being $3,223 U.S. Rather than criminalize the purchase of private health care; the government must permit a parallel system similar to that allowed in every other Western democracy.
*
Mr. Right 2U wrote:
This guy is too much!
He has the audacity to refer to Mike Harris, and the cuts he had to made to villify the feds.
So let's review his train of thought.
Mike Harris had the federal transfer payments cut by a liberal government.
That was Harris' fault.
Dalton McGuinty is having the federal rates cut-in five years from now, and he instantly points back to Mike Harris.
Am I missing something here?
You can't blame the person who faced immediate cuts for what someone else deprived him of. (Paul Martin)
But you can blame the feds for cuts (in 5 years from now) for what the premier must budget for come 5 years from now. (Stephen Harper).
The double talk coming from politicians these days is indicative of the way the view the voter.
Hint: We must all be forgetful idiots in thier eyes.
Hey Duncan! You can fool some of the people some of the time. But quit trying to fool everyone all the time.
You hopefully, will be unemployed when the reduced inflationary payments come along. If for some bizarre reason you are still there, I hope you take back all you have said about Mike Harris and eat a little humble pie.
You have hidden from reality for years. Paying off workers to get yourself elected. Now you face what others have faced, and you cry like a little baby.
Maybe, just maybe, if you had read the winds and could see past your rose-coloured glasses, you would have known and accepted the facts of constantly increasing costs to satisfy a blaoted and over-paid labour force was not in the best interest of Ontario. Rather, the best interest of your party.
What a patriot you must be!
I can hardly wiat for your next twisted take on reality. It's like watching the muppet show, only not funny.
*
Paul Young wrote:
Duncan has no clue about healthcare and its funding and/or what is wrong with healthcare?
Let's look at some facts about healthcare:
1. LHIN - why was this Agency created? Well, because McGuinty wanted take responsibiliites from MHO and created LHIN. So why did McGuinty not fixed the root causes at MHO. I am all for ensuring moneys get to healthcare, but i am not for duplicate departments that can be eliminated by streamlining business process and/or creating better compliance/governance models at MHO.
2. eHealth is a good idea, but poorly implemented. I am all for technology, especially if it helps with managing healthcare costs. However, eHealth has been poorly managed with lack of cost controls and oversight.
3. Drug costs - the government needs to work with drug companies, especially on drug costs.
4. CEO Hospitals/administration need to have the salaries/benefits reviewed and look at ways to better align it to performance. Performance metrics should included wait times, bed utilization, etc.
5. Where is the drummond report in his discussion? Drummond has already stated that there are waste in govt
McGuinty and Duncan only know one thing that is tax and spend. McGuinty and Duncan managed government by throwing money at the symptoms, not the causes. This is how mcguinty has dealt with governing Ontario since 2003. I am tired of blaming Harris, especially when Ontario receives higher transfer payments and equalization payments, which Harris never received. It is easy to blame Harris, but what did McGuinty do once in office how about the health premium tax. So, McGuinty needs to take a hard look at himself because he has been a failure to Ontario. There is a reason McGuinty has the name quick hits!
*
slightly right wrote:
waaaaaah wahhhhhhhh. Cripes Duncan the slow down in spending will not happen for 5 years and your blaming the Feds now! Three percent is plenty and you know it. Just because you are in the hole spending like a mad man on "green jobs" and other make work programs do not blame lack of coin for a provincial responsibility on anyone but you and your budgets!
Every Canadian can see through you and your other have not Provinces complaints. You do not appreciate the Billions you get plus the built in increases for what there are. Its what Canada can afford to give you for Increased payments year after year.
Yes -- you are a have not right now---- you put your hand out more than you chip in. Yes it will change but wow guy its a increase not a reduction/cut back!
*
savant1 wrote:
Duncan and McGuinty don't know how to spend wisely.
With a provincial debt that they have doubled to $220 billion and which is growing by $59 million each day I would have thought the Ontario liberals would want to do more than rob Canadian taxpayers, inflate energy costs with a "green" initiative and avoid government economies.
Remember:
1) the billion dollar scandal at eHealth continues. 109 staff still receiving $100 K salaries.
2) the provincial budget deficit adds $16.7 billion annually to the current $302 billion debt..
3) the 'golden parachute' severance contracts for disgraced public service executives such as Eleanor Clitheroe continue.
4) the Samsung Korea windmills guarantee exhorbitant feed-in tarriffs for electricity
5) granting of war measure powers to police in Toronto during the G20 resulted in civil liberties breaches.
6) additional schemes have increased the "cost of government" 77 % in 7 years.
7) enabling Stewardship Ontario to attach an eco-fee on dangerous products like aspirin, cement, fertilizers..
8) not enforcing spending controls at the OLG until breeches were uncovered by the ombudsman.
9) granting a 14% salary increase to Ontario MPP's in the middle of a recession.
10) creation of 13 LHINs to employ failed liberal politicians. None have treated a patient yet but each CEO is paid handsomely.
*
DBT1979 wrote:
What hurts hospitals is that they refuse to take my money. I'm not saying get rid of the social safety net or not provide care to people who can't afford it. I'm suggesting that if I want to spend my hard earned money on healthcare, I should be able to.
If you want to spend your money on a second car or a 500,000 house in Toronto, you can choose that option for your family.
*
Readers in the Dec.22, 2011 National Post also responded with views on Dwight Duncan's Doofusry:
Tony Beckett wrote:
Re: New Health Rule Angers Premiers, Dec. 20.
On my way to the fitness facility in the hotel where the ministers of Finance were meeting on Monday, I just missed the interviews and palavers. As an ex-provincial budget bureaucrat who tried to limit increases to health budgets in Ontario and British Columbia, I was pleased with the approach proposed by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Phasing out the existing 6% annual increases after several years and capping future increases to GDP increases with a floor of 3%, is very generous.
I was appalled by the whinging of provincial finance ministers, even if they were perhaps only crocodile tears, given that healthcare funding has become governments' largest expenditures. I hope that the disproportionate future increases will remain affordable to taxpayers, given demographic and economic factors.
As part of governments' needs to review expenditures, they should pay particular attention to future capital and equipment costs, fiscal year-end splurges, regional health authority empire-building, the pay and benefits of health-care workers, overmedication of seniors and creative billing by some physicians to medical service plans.
Health-care costs can and must be controlled, and incentives provided to those who show the way.
and
Jeff Spooner wrote:
After Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced that the federal government would no longer be a bottomless pit when it came to health-care funding, Ontario's Finance Minister Dwight Duncan gave the most over-the-top reaction. If you believe his rant, the Conservatives were destroying federal and provincial relations and that they didn't care about the health of all Canadians.
The reality, of course, is that without the impetus of a control on federal transfers, many of the provinces would continue to drag their heels on any meaningful innovation in how health care is delivered. Canadians now will have the opportunity over the next five years to see which provinces are making an effort to move forward and improve health care for their citizens, and which provinces continue to whine. My bet is that Ontario will be in the latter group.
*
Yes: Liberals Dalton McGuinty, Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor were and still are in that latter group, whose failing and arrogant idea was to stifle health care development by thuggish statist fiat and by ideological monopoly-forcing demagoguery.
Let's hope, though, that Ontario's Liberal goons are gone before five years.
***
See also here
***
Despite the above reactions to the fed's transfer proposals, it was revealing (and disgusting) how Niagara This Week's editor Mike Williscraft came up with fresh McGuinty-bootlickery in his Dec.24, 2011 'piece of Justin Trudeau' column "A glimpse into Santa's Christmas mailbag".
Williscraft's column should have more accurately been titled "A glimpse into the making of Liberal-friendly propaganda".
With this shallow column, Williscraft has clearly already begun crafting next year's narrative propaganda of 'poor ole Liberals are victims of federal health cuts', which his favoured Liberal party obviously wants Williscraft to peddle.
So - like Dwight Duncan - that's what Williscraft is also trying to do.
Williscraft DIDN'T actually bother to ascertain what NHS supervisor Kevin Smith's REAL thoughts were; the slick Williscraft propagandized HIS OWN Liberal-friendly narrative, and falsely attributed it to the NHS's Smith, all disguised, of course, as a "Christmas wish story".
'Why, it's fake, ya see; it ain't real' Williscraft will say. But that's the beauty of Williscraft's propaganda.
Williscraft didn't have the nuts to actually get Kevin Smith to say the words which pamphleteer Williscraft shoved into Smith's mouth: that would then have become an actual worthy story; what Williscraft did here was turn McGuinty's real Liberal health care fiasco into a propagandist's joke.
Williscraft didn't actually bother contacting Smith, nor Jim Bradley, nor Kim Craitor, nor Dalton McGuinty, nor Dwight Duncan, nor Deb Matthews, nor any of the Liberal-appointed LHIN lackeys for their REAL comments and reaction to the REAL health transfer story.
Williscraft -strangely hahaha!- couldn't even find any imaginary 'lump of coal' commentary to shove into any real Liberal's mouth, within his fake-wish column, either..!
Williscraft made light of Niagara's health issues using his faux-wish column to further what must be his pet agenda (to propagandize for McGuinty and protect his incompetent Liberals from blowback to their killer C. diff fiasco, by falsely involving Smith, as if his comments were funny, or reflective) thereby dumping McGuinty's eight-year-long Liberal culpability in Niagara's health mess conveniently onto the federal government.
This facile approach of the Liberal-licking Niagara media is becoming patently obvious; eventually Niagara This Week's Williscraft and the St.Catharines Standard's Wendy Metcalfe will have to ferret out Jim Bradley's Liberals, and to actually begin holding them responsible for their constitutional health care responsibilities.
*
Debt-ridden Liberal Dwight Duncan hasn't been able to spin the health-transfer accord the way McGuinty's greasy Liberals had wanted him to. Here are some of the perspectives on monopolist-pusher Duncan's irresponsible recent foot-stamping and deceptive fear-mongering:
On Dec.20, 2011 Sun Media's Mark Dunn reported in "Ont., Que. need to fix health system or feel the pain: Expert":
"Ontario and Quebec are the most vocal critics of a new health funding formula because their own budgets are hemorrhaging red ink, says an expert on finances from the western home of medicare.
"It's much easier to blame the federal government for their problems than to actually sit down and address their own situation, their own spending," says Janice MacKinnon, a former finance minister in Roy Romanow's NDP government.
Now a University of Saskatchewan fiscal policy professor, MacKinnon says Canada's two largest provinces are failing at righting their economies.
She described Monday's no-strings deal as "very fair" and "reasonable" compared to the present transfer agreement that calls for annual transfers of 6% - a figure Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says is unsustainable.
Ontario and Quebec finance ministers hyperventilated over the deal that gives the provinces five years to fix their systems before the new funding arrangement kicks in - one that ties funding to GDP growth and never slips below 3%.
Both provinces are broke and the economic outlook is grim - hence the provinces wagging a finger on one hand and stretching out the other hand for more cash.
MacKinnon says the 2004 original deal was flawed from the outset because the biggest chunk went to salaries, with some of it used to lower wait times, but not to the broader issue of fixing the health system.
With an aging population and all that comes with that demographic, MacKinnon says provinces are out of touch with health needs and service delivery.
She points to the cost of MRIs, hip and knee replacements and other ailments that develop with age. A Saskatchewan study suggested millions in savings if some of those procedures were conducted outside hospitals.
"You really have to get serious about changing your system to make it more affordable," she said".
*
Note that the same above story was also carried in the Dec.21, 2011 St.Catharines Standard, buried back on page B6, but did not include the last four paragraphs!! Why - was there something MacKinnon said which would upset secretive Niagara health monopoly pusher Jim Bradley? Like that Bradley's and Kim Craitor's monopolist Liberals "are out of touch with health needs and service delivery"??
MacKinnon - and she's an NDP eer! - is saying that Flaherty's deal was very fair and reasonable - yet, Jim Bradley's and Kim Craitor's Liberal status-quo-pushing, health-care-monopoly-enforcing statists are already moaning and whining about it. As is now usually the case, the St.Catharines Standard hasn't yet bothered to interview their local MPP, Jim Bradley, about the new health accord!
Janice MacKinnon, writing in the National Post back on July 14, 2004 noted:
“One of the greatest threats to medicare is posed by those who cling tenaciously to the status-quo and claim they are defending Tommy Douglas’s vision of medicare by doing so. Too often in politics, what we cherish most we inadvertently destroy by believing that protecting something means freezing it in time, when in fact protecting it may require dramatic change”. (see here, pg. 30)
Ignorant Ontario Liberals such as Jim Bradley and former health minister George Smitherman ended up being the poster-boys 'threatening and destroying the vision of medicare'; a prescient MacKinnon may well have been writing about them in 2004, considering what these Liberals ended up doing in Ontario from 2004 on! Their Liberal majority government was all about clinging tenaciously to some faded, failing, monopolist, anti-patient-choice status-quo mythology of the untouchable Saint Tommy Douglas. McGuinty's Liberals were status-quo-enforcing reactionary thugs, and Good Ole Nice Guy Jim Bradley was one of the leading proponents. Duncan is in denial about how his Liberals have destroyed health care in Ontario.
*
On Dec.20, 2011, the CBC reported on Dwight Doofus Duncan's deceptive Liberal fear-mongering claim that "health cuts will hurt hospitals"; to which here were some of the reader's replies:
EdmundBurke wrote:
EVER INCREASING HEALTH CARE COSTS UNSTAINABLE
Linking health care increases to the GDP is a pragmatic, bold, fiscally responsible alteration in the right direction; however, an even more contemplative small-c fiscally responsible conservative modification that would be attentive to the $580 billion debt and the $30 billion deficit would be to implement it immediately. Implementing it in 2017/18 will make it more difficult to eliminate the deficit, and would save billions in interest payments.
It's nauseating to listen to the fiscally unaccountable extremist on the far-left moronically screaming about limiting the increments in health care spending. Socialist provincial functionaries like Ontario's Duncan, who refuses to make any significant cuts to eliminate his $16 billion deficit must analyze their own socialistic-inspired, financially moronic budgets that are spending their provinces into insolvency.
A genuine small-c fiscal conservative would begin the process to re-write the Canada Health Act that currently places control of our top-down, government-rationed system in hands central planning, incompetent bureaucrats.
Government must welcome inclusion by the more efficient private sector, or permit the provinces to compete by experimenting to uncover cost savings. Health care cost $135 billion a year that are filtered through layers of expensive and wasteful bureaucracy before any of it ever gets to the actual health-care providers. Since 1998 federal health transfers to the provinces increased at an average annual rate of over 10%. Total health spending accounted for 11.4 per cent of Canada's GDP in 2009 compared with an average of 9.5 per cent across OECD countries. Canada's health spending per person was valued at $4,363 U.S., with the OECD average being $3,223 U.S. Rather than criminalize the purchase of private health care; the government must permit a parallel system similar to that allowed in every other Western democracy.
*
Mr. Right 2U wrote:
This guy is too much!
He has the audacity to refer to Mike Harris, and the cuts he had to made to villify the feds.
So let's review his train of thought.
Mike Harris had the federal transfer payments cut by a liberal government.
That was Harris' fault.
Dalton McGuinty is having the federal rates cut-in five years from now, and he instantly points back to Mike Harris.
Am I missing something here?
You can't blame the person who faced immediate cuts for what someone else deprived him of. (Paul Martin)
But you can blame the feds for cuts (in 5 years from now) for what the premier must budget for come 5 years from now. (Stephen Harper).
The double talk coming from politicians these days is indicative of the way the view the voter.
Hint: We must all be forgetful idiots in thier eyes.
Hey Duncan! You can fool some of the people some of the time. But quit trying to fool everyone all the time.
You hopefully, will be unemployed when the reduced inflationary payments come along. If for some bizarre reason you are still there, I hope you take back all you have said about Mike Harris and eat a little humble pie.
You have hidden from reality for years. Paying off workers to get yourself elected. Now you face what others have faced, and you cry like a little baby.
Maybe, just maybe, if you had read the winds and could see past your rose-coloured glasses, you would have known and accepted the facts of constantly increasing costs to satisfy a blaoted and over-paid labour force was not in the best interest of Ontario. Rather, the best interest of your party.
What a patriot you must be!
I can hardly wiat for your next twisted take on reality. It's like watching the muppet show, only not funny.
*
Paul Young wrote:
Duncan has no clue about healthcare and its funding and/or what is wrong with healthcare?
Let's look at some facts about healthcare:
1. LHIN - why was this Agency created? Well, because McGuinty wanted take responsibiliites from MHO and created LHIN. So why did McGuinty not fixed the root causes at MHO. I am all for ensuring moneys get to healthcare, but i am not for duplicate departments that can be eliminated by streamlining business process and/or creating better compliance/governance models at MHO.
2. eHealth is a good idea, but poorly implemented. I am all for technology, especially if it helps with managing healthcare costs. However, eHealth has been poorly managed with lack of cost controls and oversight.
3. Drug costs - the government needs to work with drug companies, especially on drug costs.
4. CEO Hospitals/administration need to have the salaries/benefits reviewed and look at ways to better align it to performance. Performance metrics should included wait times, bed utilization, etc.
5. Where is the drummond report in his discussion? Drummond has already stated that there are waste in govt
McGuinty and Duncan only know one thing that is tax and spend. McGuinty and Duncan managed government by throwing money at the symptoms, not the causes. This is how mcguinty has dealt with governing Ontario since 2003. I am tired of blaming Harris, especially when Ontario receives higher transfer payments and equalization payments, which Harris never received. It is easy to blame Harris, but what did McGuinty do once in office how about the health premium tax. So, McGuinty needs to take a hard look at himself because he has been a failure to Ontario. There is a reason McGuinty has the name quick hits!
*
slightly right wrote:
waaaaaah wahhhhhhhh. Cripes Duncan the slow down in spending will not happen for 5 years and your blaming the Feds now! Three percent is plenty and you know it. Just because you are in the hole spending like a mad man on "green jobs" and other make work programs do not blame lack of coin for a provincial responsibility on anyone but you and your budgets!
Every Canadian can see through you and your other have not Provinces complaints. You do not appreciate the Billions you get plus the built in increases for what there are. Its what Canada can afford to give you for Increased payments year after year.
Yes -- you are a have not right now---- you put your hand out more than you chip in. Yes it will change but wow guy its a increase not a reduction/cut back!
*
savant1 wrote:
Duncan and McGuinty don't know how to spend wisely.
With a provincial debt that they have doubled to $220 billion and which is growing by $59 million each day I would have thought the Ontario liberals would want to do more than rob Canadian taxpayers, inflate energy costs with a "green" initiative and avoid government economies.
Remember:
1) the billion dollar scandal at eHealth continues. 109 staff still receiving $100 K salaries.
2) the provincial budget deficit adds $16.7 billion annually to the current $302 billion debt..
3) the 'golden parachute' severance contracts for disgraced public service executives such as Eleanor Clitheroe continue.
4) the Samsung Korea windmills guarantee exhorbitant feed-in tarriffs for electricity
5) granting of war measure powers to police in Toronto during the G20 resulted in civil liberties breaches.
6) additional schemes have increased the "cost of government" 77 % in 7 years.
7) enabling Stewardship Ontario to attach an eco-fee on dangerous products like aspirin, cement, fertilizers..
8) not enforcing spending controls at the OLG until breeches were uncovered by the ombudsman.
9) granting a 14% salary increase to Ontario MPP's in the middle of a recession.
10) creation of 13 LHINs to employ failed liberal politicians. None have treated a patient yet but each CEO is paid handsomely.
*
DBT1979 wrote:
What hurts hospitals is that they refuse to take my money. I'm not saying get rid of the social safety net or not provide care to people who can't afford it. I'm suggesting that if I want to spend my hard earned money on healthcare, I should be able to.
If you want to spend your money on a second car or a 500,000 house in Toronto, you can choose that option for your family.
*
Readers in the Dec.22, 2011 National Post also responded with views on Dwight Duncan's Doofusry:
Tony Beckett wrote:
Re: New Health Rule Angers Premiers, Dec. 20.
On my way to the fitness facility in the hotel where the ministers of Finance were meeting on Monday, I just missed the interviews and palavers. As an ex-provincial budget bureaucrat who tried to limit increases to health budgets in Ontario and British Columbia, I was pleased with the approach proposed by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Phasing out the existing 6% annual increases after several years and capping future increases to GDP increases with a floor of 3%, is very generous.
I was appalled by the whinging of provincial finance ministers, even if they were perhaps only crocodile tears, given that healthcare funding has become governments' largest expenditures. I hope that the disproportionate future increases will remain affordable to taxpayers, given demographic and economic factors.
As part of governments' needs to review expenditures, they should pay particular attention to future capital and equipment costs, fiscal year-end splurges, regional health authority empire-building, the pay and benefits of health-care workers, overmedication of seniors and creative billing by some physicians to medical service plans.
Health-care costs can and must be controlled, and incentives provided to those who show the way.
and
Jeff Spooner wrote:
After Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced that the federal government would no longer be a bottomless pit when it came to health-care funding, Ontario's Finance Minister Dwight Duncan gave the most over-the-top reaction. If you believe his rant, the Conservatives were destroying federal and provincial relations and that they didn't care about the health of all Canadians.
The reality, of course, is that without the impetus of a control on federal transfers, many of the provinces would continue to drag their heels on any meaningful innovation in how health care is delivered. Canadians now will have the opportunity over the next five years to see which provinces are making an effort to move forward and improve health care for their citizens, and which provinces continue to whine. My bet is that Ontario will be in the latter group.
*
Yes: Liberals Dalton McGuinty, Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor were and still are in that latter group, whose failing and arrogant idea was to stifle health care development by thuggish statist fiat and by ideological monopoly-forcing demagoguery.
Let's hope, though, that Ontario's Liberal goons are gone before five years.
***
See also here
***
Despite the above reactions to the fed's transfer proposals, it was revealing (and disgusting) how Niagara This Week's editor Mike Williscraft came up with fresh McGuinty-bootlickery in his Dec.24, 2011 'piece of Justin Trudeau' column "A glimpse into Santa's Christmas mailbag".
Williscraft's column should have more accurately been titled "A glimpse into the making of Liberal-friendly propaganda".
With this shallow column, Williscraft has clearly already begun crafting next year's narrative propaganda of 'poor ole Liberals are victims of federal health cuts', which his favoured Liberal party obviously wants Williscraft to peddle.
So - like Dwight Duncan - that's what Williscraft is also trying to do.
Williscraft DIDN'T actually bother to ascertain what NHS supervisor Kevin Smith's REAL thoughts were; the slick Williscraft propagandized HIS OWN Liberal-friendly narrative, and falsely attributed it to the NHS's Smith, all disguised, of course, as a "Christmas wish story".
'Why, it's fake, ya see; it ain't real' Williscraft will say. But that's the beauty of Williscraft's propaganda.
Williscraft didn't have the nuts to actually get Kevin Smith to say the words which pamphleteer Williscraft shoved into Smith's mouth: that would then have become an actual worthy story; what Williscraft did here was turn McGuinty's real Liberal health care fiasco into a propagandist's joke.
Williscraft didn't actually bother contacting Smith, nor Jim Bradley, nor Kim Craitor, nor Dalton McGuinty, nor Dwight Duncan, nor Deb Matthews, nor any of the Liberal-appointed LHIN lackeys for their REAL comments and reaction to the REAL health transfer story.
Williscraft -strangely hahaha!- couldn't even find any imaginary 'lump of coal' commentary to shove into any real Liberal's mouth, within his fake-wish column, either..!
Williscraft made light of Niagara's health issues using his faux-wish column to further what must be his pet agenda (to propagandize for McGuinty and protect his incompetent Liberals from blowback to their killer C. diff fiasco, by falsely involving Smith, as if his comments were funny, or reflective) thereby dumping McGuinty's eight-year-long Liberal culpability in Niagara's health mess conveniently onto the federal government.
This facile approach of the Liberal-licking Niagara media is becoming patently obvious; eventually Niagara This Week's Williscraft and the St.Catharines Standard's Wendy Metcalfe will have to ferret out Jim Bradley's Liberals, and to actually begin holding them responsible for their constitutional health care responsibilities.
*
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
...and in this corner, Ole Dwight 'The Deficit' Duncan!
This article, "New health rule angers premiers" (National Post, Dec.20, 2011), noted some reactions by delegates at the federal-provincial health-transfer-payment talks:
"This is not fair, it is unCanadian," said Manitoba Finance Minister Stan Struthers. "It is not so much creating wealth as it redistributing wealth, and we are redistributing wealth from some of provinces who have a very limited capacity, to some of the richest provinces."
Mr. Struthers called the move "a slap in the face" by Ottawa.
Ahh, yes: the good ole I'll slap ya in the face cuz you're "Un-Canadian" canard!
Wow: this is the same kind of jingoistic deceptive-nationalistic-rhetoric, the same ole kind of crap which MPP Good Ole Jim Bradley and his smug McGuintyite Liberals used to regularly spew in Ontario! Can the smug socialist rhetoric of "Slippery Slope"; of "Americanization"; of "Two-tier"; of "Hidden Agenda"; of "Ole Tommy Douglas is spinning in his grave", be far behind?!?
Status-quo Struthers, the 'Great Re-Distributor', is exactly the kind of obstructive reactionary which former Liberal MP Keith Martin wrote of, who stick their head in the sand while prosletyzing at the crumbling altar of Tommy Douglas.
But socialist Struthers is not alone: Ontario's status-quo-monopolist Liberals - naturally - also were whining:
Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, the most outspoken critic of the proposals so far, said the new formula will cost his province $400-million in health funding. "It means less access to quality health care, from sea to sea to sea, in French and English, in Ontario, Quebec and all of these provinces," he said.
"This, in my view, destabilizes the federation to some extent and will make it still more difficult for us to provide the basic services we're required to and at the same time get back to balanced [budgets]."
He took particular issue with how Mr. Flaherty "put the document in front of us and said, 'This is how it is going to be.' And that's just no way to do business."
Now, talk about a hypocritical 'piece of Justin Trudeau'! Duncan reeks of it!! Duncan, McGuinty, and Bradley shoved a lot of things onto Ontarians, simply telling us 'that's how it's going to be'!!What Liberal hypocrites!
Duncan and his greaseball Liberals FORCED a new health tax onto Ontarians! Duncan and his Liberals DE-LISTED previously-covered health services! They forced the LHIN's onto Ontario! They forced a Green Energy fiasco onto Ontario! They forced their secret G-20 law onto Torontonians! For hypocrite Liberals such as whiny Ole Dunco, that was their way of 'doing business'!
Duncan and his negligent Liberals have "de-stabilized" healthcare in Niagara, forcing cuts and HIP plans onto the NHS, to the point where we've had nearly 40 patients killed this year in two C.diff outbreaks - with no explanation from Duncan 's Liberals why this had happened, seeing as the Liberals had been geting ALL their promised billions already, under the current accord, since 2004.
As the Dec.21, 2011 National Post pointed out:
"In 2004, when these same provinces agreed to the current funding formula with then-prime minister Paul Martin, it was on the understanding that they would use the 10-year accord to find ways to make health-care funding sustainable. That didn't happen, and now they want another decade to delay making the kind of tough choices needed to sustain medicare, while someone else picks up the tab. But all reasonable people know that the status quo can't last forever."
Yet, Duncan's duplicitous Liberals smugly forced their failing ideological status-quo health monopoly onto Ontarians, spinning yarns that it would last forever.
*
see reaction from Kelly McParland; from Christine Blizzard
*
"This is not fair, it is unCanadian," said Manitoba Finance Minister Stan Struthers. "It is not so much creating wealth as it redistributing wealth, and we are redistributing wealth from some of provinces who have a very limited capacity, to some of the richest provinces."
Mr. Struthers called the move "a slap in the face" by Ottawa.
Ahh, yes: the good ole I'll slap ya in the face cuz you're "Un-Canadian" canard!
Wow: this is the same kind of jingoistic deceptive-nationalistic-rhetoric, the same ole kind of crap which MPP Good Ole Jim Bradley and his smug McGuintyite Liberals used to regularly spew in Ontario! Can the smug socialist rhetoric of "Slippery Slope"; of "Americanization"; of "Two-tier"; of "Hidden Agenda"; of "Ole Tommy Douglas is spinning in his grave", be far behind?!?
Status-quo Struthers, the 'Great Re-Distributor', is exactly the kind of obstructive reactionary which former Liberal MP Keith Martin wrote of, who stick their head in the sand while prosletyzing at the crumbling altar of Tommy Douglas.
But socialist Struthers is not alone: Ontario's status-quo-monopolist Liberals - naturally - also were whining:
Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, the most outspoken critic of the proposals so far, said the new formula will cost his province $400-million in health funding. "It means less access to quality health care, from sea to sea to sea, in French and English, in Ontario, Quebec and all of these provinces," he said.
"This, in my view, destabilizes the federation to some extent and will make it still more difficult for us to provide the basic services we're required to and at the same time get back to balanced [budgets]."
He took particular issue with how Mr. Flaherty "put the document in front of us and said, 'This is how it is going to be.' And that's just no way to do business."
Now, talk about a hypocritical 'piece of Justin Trudeau'! Duncan reeks of it!! Duncan, McGuinty, and Bradley shoved a lot of things onto Ontarians, simply telling us 'that's how it's going to be'!!What Liberal hypocrites!
Duncan and his greaseball Liberals FORCED a new health tax onto Ontarians! Duncan and his Liberals DE-LISTED previously-covered health services! They forced the LHIN's onto Ontario! They forced a Green Energy fiasco onto Ontario! They forced their secret G-20 law onto Torontonians! For hypocrite Liberals such as whiny Ole Dunco, that was their way of 'doing business'!
Duncan and his negligent Liberals have "de-stabilized" healthcare in Niagara, forcing cuts and HIP plans onto the NHS, to the point where we've had nearly 40 patients killed this year in two C.diff outbreaks - with no explanation from Duncan 's Liberals why this had happened, seeing as the Liberals had been geting ALL their promised billions already, under the current accord, since 2004.
As the Dec.21, 2011 National Post pointed out:
"In 2004, when these same provinces agreed to the current funding formula with then-prime minister Paul Martin, it was on the understanding that they would use the 10-year accord to find ways to make health-care funding sustainable. That didn't happen, and now they want another decade to delay making the kind of tough choices needed to sustain medicare, while someone else picks up the tab. But all reasonable people know that the status quo can't last forever."
Yet, Duncan's duplicitous Liberals smugly forced their failing ideological status-quo health monopoly onto Ontarians, spinning yarns that it would last forever.
*
see reaction from Kelly McParland; from Christine Blizzard
*
The St.Catharines Standard's green landfill
Looking at the St.Catharines Standard's Dec.20, 2011 story "Dreaming of a green Christmas", one might be forgiven for at first thinking that this was a typical VanDongen/Mayer piece of GreenTeamsterism; but no, it's the same kind of green pandering propaganda, now purveyed by Don Fraser, enabled by photos from Bob Tymczyszyn.
The "season is rife with things given" which "might end up in landfills", we are ominously informed by Fraser, who uses St.Catharines City Hall employee Melissa Hellwig as a conduit exemplifying How The Planet Can (Should/Must) Be Saved, and, also includes a good, quick dose of anti-import and buy-local disjointed rhetoric from Niagara's pseudo-environment minister Jane Hanlon.
Of course, in that typical green-biased way pioneered by the GreenTeamsters, Fraser didn't concern himself with actually challenging anything his subjects said - this was simply a fine fluffy piece of light-green propaganda, brought to us by the Metcalfian wrong-righters at the Standard. It was pointless diversionary enviro-babble to fill column inches; in other words, it was itself green landfill.
Thankfully, Wendy Metcalfe's Standard didn't bother sending Fraser and Tymczyszyn to stake out their secretive local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, to obtain a real story detailing Bradley's comments on Niagara's killler C.difficile horror unfolding (again) in Bradley's Liberal-run health monopoly!
Wow......
*
The "season is rife with things given" which "might end up in landfills", we are ominously informed by Fraser, who uses St.Catharines City Hall employee Melissa Hellwig as a conduit exemplifying How The Planet Can (Should/Must) Be Saved, and, also includes a good, quick dose of anti-import and buy-local disjointed rhetoric from Niagara's pseudo-environment minister Jane Hanlon.
Of course, in that typical green-biased way pioneered by the GreenTeamsters, Fraser didn't concern himself with actually challenging anything his subjects said - this was simply a fine fluffy piece of light-green propaganda, brought to us by the Metcalfian wrong-righters at the Standard. It was pointless diversionary enviro-babble to fill column inches; in other words, it was itself green landfill.
Thankfully, Wendy Metcalfe's Standard didn't bother sending Fraser and Tymczyszyn to stake out their secretive local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, to obtain a real story detailing Bradley's comments on Niagara's killler C.difficile horror unfolding (again) in Bradley's Liberal-run health monopoly!
Wow......
*
The NHS should be treated as a crime scene
Further to my previous post ...
...the Dec.20, 2011 St.Catharines Standard reported that a C.difficile patient had died Dec.18 at GNGH, the hospital in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Oh, and a Norovirus outbreak was declared in Niagara as well, at the Welland hospital.
The story by Brett Clarkson, of course, did not mention any comments or reaction from the two local Niagara Liberal health-care monopolists, Kim Craitor or Jim Bradley, whose government runs the infection-plagued Niagara health monopoly.
No mention was made of any comments from the LHIN; and of course, no mention was made of any comments from health minister Deb Matthews.
Funny how the big-mouth local monopolist mayors such as Brian McMullan and Jim Diodati weren't asked for their comments either.
There have been no demands from these mayors that a public inquiry be called into the C.diff horror which McGuinty's Liberals have subjected our population to. Diodati and McMullan are quiet as church mice when it comes to demanding answers from their Liberal MPP's about these scores of Niagara patient deaths. Better to still blame Harris, eh?!
So, let's just forget - as Niagara's monopolist-friendly status-quo-supporting press has done - about examining Dalton McGuinty's Liberal impact on Niagara's 2011 C.diff deaths due to his Liberal's secretive decision to hide from a public C.diff inquiry back in 2008!!
The NHS should be treated as a crime scene: why isn't it?
*
...the Dec.20, 2011 St.Catharines Standard reported that a C.difficile patient had died Dec.18 at GNGH, the hospital in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Oh, and a Norovirus outbreak was declared in Niagara as well, at the Welland hospital.
The story by Brett Clarkson, of course, did not mention any comments or reaction from the two local Niagara Liberal health-care monopolists, Kim Craitor or Jim Bradley, whose government runs the infection-plagued Niagara health monopoly.
No mention was made of any comments from the LHIN; and of course, no mention was made of any comments from health minister Deb Matthews.
Funny how the big-mouth local monopolist mayors such as Brian McMullan and Jim Diodati weren't asked for their comments either.
There have been no demands from these mayors that a public inquiry be called into the C.diff horror which McGuinty's Liberals have subjected our population to. Diodati and McMullan are quiet as church mice when it comes to demanding answers from their Liberal MPP's about these scores of Niagara patient deaths. Better to still blame Harris, eh?!
So, let's just forget - as Niagara's monopolist-friendly status-quo-supporting press has done - about examining Dalton McGuinty's Liberal impact on Niagara's 2011 C.diff deaths due to his Liberal's secretive decision to hide from a public C.diff inquiry back in 2008!!
The NHS should be treated as a crime scene: why isn't it?
*
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Roy Romanow shills for McGuinty Liberal health-care cuts
Pauline Tam wrote in "Quick action on healthcare best" (Ottawa Citizen, Dec.20, 2011):
"Roy Romanow, the former Saskatchewan premier who slashed medicare in an effort to save it, has fighting words for Premier Dalton McGuinty, whose minority government is seeking ways to rein in skyrocketing health-care costs.
No matter how the McGuinty Liberals decide to cut spending and reshape Ontario's health system, they should act decisively, move fast and brace for political heat, said Romanow.
"What you have to do is implement the reforms as quickly as you can and as effectively as you can in order to get the population to understand that it isn't all bad," Romanow said in an interview. "In fact, it's probably the right thing to do."
The Ontario government, crippled by a $16-billion deficit and weakening economy, is contemplating spending cuts and changes to the health system that broadly resemble those of deficit-plagued Saskatchewan in the 1990s. As premier of the province that invented medicare, Romanow enraged many people by closing hospitals, slashing public drug spending and reorganizing the way health services were delivered.
Rural residents grumbled about losing their hospitals - and the jobs that went with them. Scores of nurses were laid off. Doctors complained about their diminished clout.
Voters and labour unions were particularly shocked that the austerity measures came from an NDP government that styled itself a guardian of Tommy Douglas's medicare legacy.
The Ontario Health Coalition, a pro-medicare group, has warned that this province faces a similar fate, which would jeopardize the quality of patient care.
Yet despite fierce public opposition, Romanow's reforms allowed Saskatchewan to balance its budget three years into his term and won his party a second majority government.
Romanow said he tried to remain faithful to medicare's core values of fairness and compassion. He indicated, for example, that his government avoided privatizing certain health services or introducing user fees, which would only have shifted costs from the public purse to individuals who had to pay out of pocket.
Such an approach would have done nothing to reduce the overall share of provincial wealth devoted to health spending - a situation that McGuinty also understands, said Romanow. "In my judgment, I think Premier McGuinty has recognized the traps of false economy. I would say Premier McGuinty is making all the right overtures.""
*
Wow - just look at that:
Romanow is a now some kinda FLICKING socialist hero for trotting out the Michael Decter-ian contradiction of "slashing medicare, in order to save it" (see here, pg.11-12).
It was Romanow's NDP predecessor Tommy Douglas who invented the "false economy" called medicare!
Now, Roy Romanow has strangely somehow become a fountain of sage advice for Dalton McGuinty's monopolist Liberal ideologues?!?! WTF?
Romanow was squeezed by the Martin/Chretien health cuts, as Ontario's Harris also was - yet look at who's now being touted as some kind of advisor/ hero to the Liberals, and who's been incessantly demonized by the lib left!
The only Liberal overture playing here in Ontario is a prelude to tragedy, with McGuinty's faux-finance ministerDwight Duncan Don Drummond and faux-health minister Deb Matthews Romanow setting the sombre tone.
Enjoy your holidays; next year will be real ugly.
*
"Roy Romanow, the former Saskatchewan premier who slashed medicare in an effort to save it, has fighting words for Premier Dalton McGuinty, whose minority government is seeking ways to rein in skyrocketing health-care costs.
No matter how the McGuinty Liberals decide to cut spending and reshape Ontario's health system, they should act decisively, move fast and brace for political heat, said Romanow.
"What you have to do is implement the reforms as quickly as you can and as effectively as you can in order to get the population to understand that it isn't all bad," Romanow said in an interview. "In fact, it's probably the right thing to do."
The Ontario government, crippled by a $16-billion deficit and weakening economy, is contemplating spending cuts and changes to the health system that broadly resemble those of deficit-plagued Saskatchewan in the 1990s. As premier of the province that invented medicare, Romanow enraged many people by closing hospitals, slashing public drug spending and reorganizing the way health services were delivered.
Rural residents grumbled about losing their hospitals - and the jobs that went with them. Scores of nurses were laid off. Doctors complained about their diminished clout.
Voters and labour unions were particularly shocked that the austerity measures came from an NDP government that styled itself a guardian of Tommy Douglas's medicare legacy.
The Ontario Health Coalition, a pro-medicare group, has warned that this province faces a similar fate, which would jeopardize the quality of patient care.
Yet despite fierce public opposition, Romanow's reforms allowed Saskatchewan to balance its budget three years into his term and won his party a second majority government.
Romanow said he tried to remain faithful to medicare's core values of fairness and compassion. He indicated, for example, that his government avoided privatizing certain health services or introducing user fees, which would only have shifted costs from the public purse to individuals who had to pay out of pocket.
Such an approach would have done nothing to reduce the overall share of provincial wealth devoted to health spending - a situation that McGuinty also understands, said Romanow. "In my judgment, I think Premier McGuinty has recognized the traps of false economy. I would say Premier McGuinty is making all the right overtures.""
*
Wow - just look at that:
Romanow is a now some kinda FLICKING socialist hero for trotting out the Michael Decter-ian contradiction of "slashing medicare, in order to save it" (see here, pg.11-12).
It was Romanow's NDP predecessor Tommy Douglas who invented the "false economy" called medicare!
Now, Roy Romanow has strangely somehow become a fountain of sage advice for Dalton McGuinty's monopolist Liberal ideologues?!?! WTF?
Romanow was squeezed by the Martin/Chretien health cuts, as Ontario's Harris also was - yet look at who's now being touted as some kind of advisor/ hero to the Liberals, and who's been incessantly demonized by the lib left!
The only Liberal overture playing here in Ontario is a prelude to tragedy, with McGuinty's faux-finance minister
Enjoy your holidays; next year will be real ugly.
*
Profligate McGuinty wants more federal cash
John Ivison in "Reality tempers health discord" (Dec.14, 2011 National Post) reported how Newfoundland is demanding that the federal government pay 25% of their health care costs (a 49% increase in health care transfers) because of the province's greying population.
Compare Newfoundland's demands today in 2011 to what Newfoundland's premier Danny Williams was saying in 2004, (during the health care transfer talks under Paul Martin) as Ivison himself reported in his story "Money will not fix what ails system: Summit was a missed opportunity" (National Post, Sept.17, 2004):
"...Williams, who had previously said that the whole process was a "farce" that could "destroy health care for a generation," was much more emollient after the deal was signed. The vision of dollar signs he saw on the road to the conference centre persuaded him that they had reached an agreement of which everyone could be proud. He did say his province still had serious fiscal problems but told Paul Martin, "It's not your problem ...that's my problem, that's our problem and I don't expect you to fix and heal all those problems." Martin should put such provincial empathy down to sleep deprivation because Williams is unlikely to be as understanding when the premiers crash antlers with the Prime Minister over equalization payments next month..."
Have Newfoundland - or Ontario - bothered to solve their 'serious fiscal problems' yet, seven years later?! Or are the 'visions of federal dollar signs' still dancing in their heads?
McGuinty, the single-payer health-care monopoly-pushing premier Liberal liar of Ontario, is billions in the hole, with debt-rating downgrades looming in his now-have-not province. McGuinty's wasted billions on his Green Energy scams and eHealth charades; now duplicitous Dalton too wants more cash from the feds, to enable him to continue in his unaccountable ways?! Does a profligate statist such as Dalton intend to surrender any of the constitutional responsibility his province has over health care, in return for federal cash, or does he feel he's just damn well entitled to be given such largesse, without question or stipulation?!
Where does 'suck-and-blow' Dalton think this money comes from, anyhow?
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Compare Newfoundland's demands today in 2011 to what Newfoundland's premier Danny Williams was saying in 2004, (during the health care transfer talks under Paul Martin) as Ivison himself reported in his story "Money will not fix what ails system: Summit was a missed opportunity" (National Post, Sept.17, 2004):
"...Williams, who had previously said that the whole process was a "farce" that could "destroy health care for a generation," was much more emollient after the deal was signed. The vision of dollar signs he saw on the road to the conference centre persuaded him that they had reached an agreement of which everyone could be proud. He did say his province still had serious fiscal problems but told Paul Martin, "It's not your problem ...that's my problem, that's our problem and I don't expect you to fix and heal all those problems." Martin should put such provincial empathy down to sleep deprivation because Williams is unlikely to be as understanding when the premiers crash antlers with the Prime Minister over equalization payments next month..."
Have Newfoundland - or Ontario - bothered to solve their 'serious fiscal problems' yet, seven years later?! Or are the 'visions of federal dollar signs' still dancing in their heads?
McGuinty, the single-payer health-care monopoly-pushing premier Liberal liar of Ontario, is billions in the hole, with debt-rating downgrades looming in his now-have-not province. McGuinty's wasted billions on his Green Energy scams and eHealth charades; now duplicitous Dalton too wants more cash from the feds, to enable him to continue in his unaccountable ways?! Does a profligate statist such as Dalton intend to surrender any of the constitutional responsibility his province has over health care, in return for federal cash, or does he feel he's just damn well entitled to be given such largesse, without question or stipulation?!
Where does 'suck-and-blow' Dalton think this money comes from, anyhow?
*
Monday, December 19, 2011
Niagara's Top News Story of 2011: how Liberal MPP Jim Bradley vanished during Niagara's 'Summer Of C.diff Death'
Let's see: what will Wendy Metcalfe's St.Catharines Standard come up with, at year's-end, as Niagara's 'top news story of 2011'?
Hmm.
Will we see Grant Lafleche write another summation, similar to this previous doozy, which had named healthcare as the top Niagara story of 2008...
(you know: when Smitherman, Bradley, Craitor, and McGuinty forced the NHS to create a HIP; after which the Liberals then closed two ER's in Niagara)
...yet, somehow, Lafleche and his Standard editors... um... forgot to mention St.Catharines' Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's role in the creation of the HIP!! (hahaha)
Somehow - Lafleche also didn't mention Jim Bradley's comments regarding his secretive Liberals quashing a public inquiry that year, in 2008, which would have openly examined the HUNDREDS of C. diff deaths which had already then occurred in Ontario's Liberal health monopoly!
That was a great example of the St.Catharines Standard's propensity for blatant Bradley buttlickery.
So, we can almost see Metcalfe's Standard 'wrong-righting' spin for any 2011 summary: continuing covering up for Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's abdication of responsibility while almost 40 patients were killed during Niagara's Summer Of C.diff Death.
During the entire summer of 2011, the St.Catharines Standard carefully avoided any mention of Liberal MPP Jim Bradley regarding the killer C.diff outbreak in Bradley's Liberal-monopoly-run Niagara hospitals. ...[After all, the Honourable Jim Bradley is a Busy Man, a Busy Cabinet Minister, y'see; how can Busy Liberal Men Such As Jim Bradley have the time to comment on trivialities such as Killer C.diff Outbreaks, when they are Busy with Other More Important Grand Projects??]
The St.Catharines Standard made a concerted effort to cover up for Liberal MPP Jim Bradley: the Standard did not carry any stories which, when dealing with Niagara's 2011 C.diff outbreak as the subject matter, also indicated to readers whether or not Jim Bradley had been contacted by the Standard, and, whether or not Jim Bradley had answered any Standard request for his comments on the killer C.diff outbreak unfolding in his own city.
The Standard purposefully isolated Liberal MPP Jim Bradley from scrutiny during the entire duration of the (first) Niagara C.diff outbreak, from when it first began developing in May 2011, right up until Dec.2011, when another Niagara C.diff outbreak was declared!! Somehow, suddenly Jim Bradley and his Liberal policies had nothing to do with healthcare in Niagara!
It wasn't enough that secretive Liberal MPP Jim Bradley ran away into his Cone Of Silence during the initial summer 2011 C.diff outbreak, and the St.Catharines Standard conveniently couldn't be bothered to hunt him down; the same thing happened again, when another C.diff outbreak was announced in the first week of Dec.2011!
Liberal MPP Jim Bradley simply and conveniently vanished from the pages of the St.Catharines Standard when it came to the issue of two 2011 C.diff outbreaks in his own backyard!
Lafleche's 2008-summation Standard story didn't bother to examine Liberal Jim Bradley's reasons for his Liberals hiding from calling a public C.diff inquiry in 2008 - the findings from which might very well have had positive preventative implications in Niagara three years later in 2011, saving lives which were otherwise lost; the Standard hasn't yet bothered to ask Jim Bradley about why - despite Liberal lying assurances that C.diff was under control in 2008 - Niagara ended up with not one, but TWO C.difficile outbreaks in 2011!
So it would be awkward, to say the least, for the hypocritical St.Catharines Standard to name Niagara's Summer of C.diff Death as the top story of 2011, without mentioning their own role in aiding and abetting the sudden sounds of silence emanating from Niagara's other-wise loudest Liberal health care monopolist, Jim Bradley.
I'm sure that Lafleche would be willing to try, though: I mean, look at how wonderfully Lafleche spun his Dec.19, 2011 Standard story about the Salvation Army's fund-raising efforts - even, forsooth, using the word "Christmas" - completely omitting to mention his Hitchens-onian disdain for religion and his apparent willingness to assault priests with large sticks of lumber to prove it.
To paraphrase Warren Kinsella's smelly 'piece of Justin Trudeau' article in the Dec.19, 2011 St.Catharines Standard: the St.Catharines Standard is simply Jim Bradley's not-so-stealthy Liberal water carrier.
*
Hmm.
Will we see Grant Lafleche write another summation, similar to this previous doozy, which had named healthcare as the top Niagara story of 2008...
(you know: when Smitherman, Bradley, Craitor, and McGuinty forced the NHS to create a HIP; after which the Liberals then closed two ER's in Niagara)
...yet, somehow, Lafleche and his Standard editors... um... forgot to mention St.Catharines' Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's role in the creation of the HIP!! (hahaha)
Somehow - Lafleche also didn't mention Jim Bradley's comments regarding his secretive Liberals quashing a public inquiry that year, in 2008, which would have openly examined the HUNDREDS of C. diff deaths which had already then occurred in Ontario's Liberal health monopoly!
That was a great example of the St.Catharines Standard's propensity for blatant Bradley buttlickery.
So, we can almost see Metcalfe's Standard 'wrong-righting' spin for any 2011 summary: continuing covering up for Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's abdication of responsibility while almost 40 patients were killed during Niagara's Summer Of C.diff Death.
During the entire summer of 2011, the St.Catharines Standard carefully avoided any mention of Liberal MPP Jim Bradley regarding the killer C.diff outbreak in Bradley's Liberal-monopoly-run Niagara hospitals. ...[After all, the Honourable Jim Bradley is a Busy Man, a Busy Cabinet Minister, y'see; how can Busy Liberal Men Such As Jim Bradley have the time to comment on trivialities such as Killer C.diff Outbreaks, when they are Busy with Other More Important Grand Projects??]
The St.Catharines Standard made a concerted effort to cover up for Liberal MPP Jim Bradley: the Standard did not carry any stories which, when dealing with Niagara's 2011 C.diff outbreak as the subject matter, also indicated to readers whether or not Jim Bradley had been contacted by the Standard, and, whether or not Jim Bradley had answered any Standard request for his comments on the killer C.diff outbreak unfolding in his own city.
The Standard purposefully isolated Liberal MPP Jim Bradley from scrutiny during the entire duration of the (first) Niagara C.diff outbreak, from when it first began developing in May 2011, right up until Dec.2011, when another Niagara C.diff outbreak was declared!! Somehow, suddenly Jim Bradley and his Liberal policies had nothing to do with healthcare in Niagara!
It wasn't enough that secretive Liberal MPP Jim Bradley ran away into his Cone Of Silence during the initial summer 2011 C.diff outbreak, and the St.Catharines Standard conveniently couldn't be bothered to hunt him down; the same thing happened again, when another C.diff outbreak was announced in the first week of Dec.2011!
Liberal MPP Jim Bradley simply and conveniently vanished from the pages of the St.Catharines Standard when it came to the issue of two 2011 C.diff outbreaks in his own backyard!
Lafleche's 2008-summation Standard story didn't bother to examine Liberal Jim Bradley's reasons for his Liberals hiding from calling a public C.diff inquiry in 2008 - the findings from which might very well have had positive preventative implications in Niagara three years later in 2011, saving lives which were otherwise lost; the Standard hasn't yet bothered to ask Jim Bradley about why - despite Liberal lying assurances that C.diff was under control in 2008 - Niagara ended up with not one, but TWO C.difficile outbreaks in 2011!
So it would be awkward, to say the least, for the hypocritical St.Catharines Standard to name Niagara's Summer of C.diff Death as the top story of 2011, without mentioning their own role in aiding and abetting the sudden sounds of silence emanating from Niagara's other-wise loudest Liberal health care monopolist, Jim Bradley.
I'm sure that Lafleche would be willing to try, though: I mean, look at how wonderfully Lafleche spun his Dec.19, 2011 Standard story about the Salvation Army's fund-raising efforts - even, forsooth, using the word "Christmas" - completely omitting to mention his Hitchens-onian disdain for religion and his apparent willingness to assault priests with large sticks of lumber to prove it.
To paraphrase Warren Kinsella's smelly 'piece of Justin Trudeau' article in the Dec.19, 2011 St.Catharines Standard: the St.Catharines Standard is simply Jim Bradley's not-so-stealthy Liberal water carrier.
*
Saturday, December 17, 2011
A little shiddle-diddle at the Liberal-friendly Standard
There was a great editorial cartoon in the Dec.17, 2011 St.Catharines Standard, showing Ontario Liberal MPP Environment Minister Jim Bradley, depicted as a caveman neanderthal, holding a bloody club in his hand, dragging a Burning Planet Earth in a net trailing behind him, wearing a banner saying "8 years of Liberal despotic majority", trampling dead C. difficile victims and secret-Liberal-G20-law victims under his feet. Very good choice of political cartoon for Wendy Metcalfe's St.Catharines Standard; Warren Kinsella, I'm sure, will be outraged at how "right-wing" the St.Catharines Standard (a Sun Media paper) is!! There were so many... sooo many... wrongs righted here with this cartoon, eh Wendy?!
Oh, the only question is, why has it taken the St.Catharines Standard this long -8 years- to finally paint a true picture of... um, how did that shiddle-diddle fop mini-Trudeau put it? ... of how 'full of sh!t' Jim Bradley and his Liberal goons are?!
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Oh, the only question is, why has it taken the St.Catharines Standard this long -8 years- to finally paint a true picture of... um, how did that shiddle-diddle fop mini-Trudeau put it? ... of how 'full of sh!t' Jim Bradley and his Liberal goons are?!
*
Friday, December 16, 2011
The St.Catharines Standard's gift to Liberal MPP Jim Bradley: silence
Funny that the Metcalfian 'wrong-righters' at the St.Catharines Standard haven't yet bothered to interview or even mention their local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley in regards to Canada's move last week in Durban to finally and mercifully get ourselves out of Liberal Jean Chretien's Kyoto GreenScam.
When it comes to the blessed environment, Ontario's blessed Environment Minister Jim Bradley has once again vanished into the Standard's Cone of Convenient Silence.
Keeping Ole Jimmy under wraps, are we, Wendy?! No wrongs to be righted here, Wendy?!
Ole Jimmy James J.J. Bradley was Ontario's smuggest Kyoto-pusher a decade ago; media outlets such as the St.Catharines Standard happily and without much question eagerly parroted and amplified Jim Bradley's Liberal GreenFear climate-change/global-warming economic thuggery.
Now, Bradley's green love child has been aborted, and Ole deadbeat Green Jim has beat it and vanished - conveniently, with no questions or scrutiny from the only major daily in Bradley's own city! The 'planet was in dire peril' the Standard had once loved to pronounce/fear-monger; why isn't the Standard demanding answers now from their local GreenFear god Jim about why he has now Abandoned The Planet; about why he is no longer Preventing Global Doom; about why he didn't personally intervene in Durban to Save the Earth?!
Whaddaya expect from the local Liberal Clarion which, somehow, miraculously, didn't bother to pursue Jim Bradley for his reaction to the Jack Kitts NHS HIP review three years ago;
which didn't bother to interview Bradley about his knowledge of his Liberal's secret G20 law;
which didn't bother to interview Bradley about Niagara's Summer of C.diff Death;
which didn't bother to get Jim Bradley's local response to auditor Jim McCarter's recent report, or, to environment commissioner Gord Miller's recent report.
What aChristmas, pardon, holiday present from the St.Catharines Standard to their buddy Ole Unca Jim: keeping Good Ole Jim Bradley carefully and lovingly protected from scrutiny, safely wrapped and covered up from questions or controversy!
The double-standard courtesy of the St.Catharines Standard: not just a silent night, but silent years... the Liberal media gift that keeps on giving.
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When it comes to the blessed environment, Ontario's blessed Environment Minister Jim Bradley has once again vanished into the Standard's Cone of Convenient Silence.
Keeping Ole Jimmy under wraps, are we, Wendy?! No wrongs to be righted here, Wendy?!
Ole Jimmy James J.J. Bradley was Ontario's smuggest Kyoto-pusher a decade ago; media outlets such as the St.Catharines Standard happily and without much question eagerly parroted and amplified Jim Bradley's Liberal GreenFear climate-change/global-warming economic thuggery.
Now, Bradley's green love child has been aborted, and Ole deadbeat Green Jim has beat it and vanished - conveniently, with no questions or scrutiny from the only major daily in Bradley's own city! The 'planet was in dire peril' the Standard had once loved to pronounce/fear-monger; why isn't the Standard demanding answers now from their local GreenFear god Jim about why he has now Abandoned The Planet; about why he is no longer Preventing Global Doom; about why he didn't personally intervene in Durban to Save the Earth?!
Whaddaya expect from the local Liberal Clarion which, somehow, miraculously, didn't bother to pursue Jim Bradley for his reaction to the Jack Kitts NHS HIP review three years ago;
which didn't bother to interview Bradley about his knowledge of his Liberal's secret G20 law;
which didn't bother to interview Bradley about Niagara's Summer of C.diff Death;
which didn't bother to get Jim Bradley's local response to auditor Jim McCarter's recent report, or, to environment commissioner Gord Miller's recent report.
What a
The double-standard courtesy of the St.Catharines Standard: not just a silent night, but silent years... the Liberal media gift that keeps on giving.
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Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Ontario needs an inquest into the 'misconceptions' of Liberal monopolist health care
Compare these two stories:
Alison Langley wrote in "Douglas Memorial not equipped to handle serious trauma cases, inquest told" (posted Dec.12, 2011, Niagara Falls Review):
"The public felt they had a full-service hospital, but in reality they didn't," he said.
At an inquest probing the death of Reilly Anzovino, Kitts testified Douglas Memorial had not been a full-service hospital since the mid-1990s.
The hospital did not have a surgeon on site and it did not have diagnostic tools such as a CT scan.
Paramedics have taken patients from the Fort Erie area to hospitals in Niagara Falls, Welland, St. Catharines or Hamilton for a number of years, he added.
"Severely injured patients should not go where they can't be helped," Kitts told the three-woman, two-man jury.
The Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network in July 2008 appointed Kitts to review the feasibility of the NHS hospital improvement plan.
Kitts hosted a number of town-hall forums across the region to consult the public on the controversial plan.
"There was a lot of media (coverage) and a lot of negative reaction by physicians and members of the community," Kitts said.
Kitts' report, released in November 2008, largely endorsed the NHS restructuring plan, which recommended the emergency rooms at Douglas Memorial and Port Colborne General be downgraded to urgent-care facilities.
Less than two months later, Anzovino suffered critical injuries following a two-vehicle collision on Highway 3 between Fort Erie and Port Colborne.
Paramedics rushed her to Welland County General Hospital where the 18-year-old college student was pronounced dead.
"My heart goes out to the Anzovino family," Kitts said. "I have two daughters myself. I really feel for you."
Fort Erie family physician Dr. David Henry testified that prior to the NHS's reorganization of Douglas Memorial, the hospital was capable of stabilizing serious trauma patients so that they could be transferred by ambulance to another facility.
That ability, he added, remains in effect.
"Our capabilities remain the same, it's just that we lost the designation of ambulance destination."
Since the reorganization, Henry added, the volume of patients going to Niagara Falls and Welland hospitals have "totally clogged up their ERs."
In his review, Kitts supported the NHS proposal of creating centres of excellence as a way to save money, and to concentrate resources to ensure the best quality care for patients.
"Instead of having five separate hospitals all fighting for limited resources, use the five together to benefit the whole Niagara peninsula by creating these centres of excellence," he told the jury.
He said a Welland surgeon's suggestion last week that an NHS site be designated as a trauma centre could fit in that "centre of excellence" definition.
Such a proposal, he added, would require an extensive feasibility study.
The nearest designated trauma centre in Ontario is Hamilton General Hospital.
Henry said the closest trauma centre, Erie County Medical Centre in Buffalo is less than 15 minutes from Fort Erie.
Bureaucratic obstacles, however, have made it "near impossible" to get approval to send patients across the border, he added.
The inquest continues today in Welland.
******
John Robbins reported in "ER conversion not to blame: Kitts
Dr. Jack Kitts testifies at Anzovino inquest" (Dec.12, 2011 Niagara This Week):
The man who gave the thumbs up to Niagara’s controversial hospital restructuring plan three years ago says the conversion of emergency departments in Fort Erie and Port Colborne in no way contributed to the death of Reilly Anzovino.
Dr. Jack Kitts, president and chief executive officer of the Ottawa Hospital, took to the stand at the inquest probing the December 2009 death of the 18-year-old Fort Erie teen, who had been critically injured when the car she was a passenger in spun out on an icy stretch of Highway 3 almost midway between the Port Colborne General and Fort Erie’s Douglas Memorial hospitals.
Kitts, who in the summer of 2008 was asked to review the Niagara Health System’s so-called hospital improvement plan, testified before the inquest Monday in Welland the ERs at Douglas Memorial and Port Colborne General had been treating few seriously ill patients and virtually no trauma patients for more than a decade by the time the NHS redesignated the ERs at those two facilities “urgent-care centres.”
Rather than some kind of overnight change, the conversion happened gradually as a result of changes in medical technology that left the two hospitals behind as well as the loss of on-call general surgery capability.
“They (the ERs) had converted over time to that,” said Kitts. “This was a formalization of what they had become.”
Sitting in the witness chair a few dozen feet away from Reilly’s parents, Tim Anzovino and Denise Kennedy, both of whom have been attending the inquest every day it has met since Oct. 31, Kitts offered his condolences on the loss of their daughter.
“My heart goes out to the Anzovino family,” said Kitts. “I hope with the passage of time something good can come out of this.”
Just what can be done to prevent similar deaths – one of the key questions the five member inquest jury has been charged with answering – remains unclear.
All previous witnesses at the inquest have said they know of nothing that could have been done to save Anzovino, who, according to medical witnesses, went into cardiac arrest as the result of massive internal bleeding caused by the force of the collision around 11:30 p.m. on Boxing Day 2009.
Bad weather contributed to a delay in getting Anzovino to hospital by ambulance. By the time she arrived at Welland County General hospital about an hour later, she was considered VSA or vital signs absent.
The emergency room team at Welland County General spent more than 50 frantic minutes trying to revive her in hopes of sending her to surgery to stop the internal bleeding.
The ER doctor who worked on Anzovino that night testified last week that her injuries were so extensive that even if the accident had happened outside a specialized trauma centre, such as Hamilton General or Toronto’s Sunnybrook hospital, she likely couldn’t have been saved.
None of the NHS hospital sites is a designated trauma centre, which would typically have a team of specialist surgeons and nurses and at least one operating room ready at all times to receive critically injured patients by land or air ambulance.
Kitts said the “definitive care” for trauma patients such as Anzovino is such a trauma centre – including near by Erie County Medical Centre, in Buffalo.
If unable to transport to one of those facilities, the next best place for trauma patients to go is one of the NHS’s three larger hospitals – Welland County General, Greater Niagara General and St. Catharines.
While not trauma centres, all three of those hospitals have on-call general and orthopedic surgeons and anesthesiologists.
The hospital improvement plan, or HIP as it has come to be known, is nearly three years into the implementation-phase, and it has failed to gain widespread support from either the medical community or from citizens.
The plan was first made public in 2008. It’s a five-year strategy to improve the quality of care at Niagara hospitals and balance the NHS budget by 2013.
To achieve these goals, the plan calls for a sweeping reorganization of hospital services across the region by clustering clinical programs into what are termed “centres of excellence.”
Only a portion of the changes envisioned in the plan have been implemented, such as the conversion of emergency rooms at hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne into urgent care centres.
Many of the proposed changes, including the closure of maternity and pediatric wards in Niagara Falls and Welland, are contingent upon completion of the new St. Catharines health-care complex.
Kitts said it while in Niagara in 2008 reviewing the plan and repeated it again at the inquest Monday: The centres of excellence make for a “critical mass” of patients, where medical staff and expensive equipment can be used to their maximum potential.
“If you don’t have critical mass, you won’t have the best (care),” said Kitts, adding it’s sometimes better for a patient to travel further for the most appropriate care rather than go arrive sooner at the nearest hospital, which may not be able to provide the proper care.
The hospital improvement plan is no more popular today than in 2008, when thousands of people in Fort Erie and Port Colborne rallied in opposition to the changes at their community hospitals.
Kitts said many people in both communities were and likely still are under the wrong impression that they had a full-service hospital at the time the ERs were converted to urgent-care centres.
Among those who protested the changes was Dr. David Henry, a Fort Erie family physician and emergency room doctor, who was also called to testify at the inquest on Monday.
Like Kitts, Henry said Douglas Memorial was not equipped to handle trauma cases like Reilly Anzovino at the time the ER was converted to an urgent-centre, nor had it been able to do so for many years before.
“I don’t think Fort Erie or Port Colborne would have made a difference (in Anzovino’s case),” said Henry. Fort Erie did at one time have a general surgeon, but he retired in the mid 1990s and was never replaced. After that, the hospital did mostly minor procedures and day surgeries until the operating rooms were closed for good as part of the hospital improvement plan.
Although the hospital still has a supply of blood products and at least one doctor working around the clock inside the urgent-care centre, Anzovino needed surgery to stop the internal bleeding, said Henry.
In cases were a person suffers major injuries in an accident, they are better off going to a full-service hospital where there is a surgeon available.
“It’s as simple as that,” said Henry.
Despite the conversion to an urgent-care centre, Henry said Douglas Memorial still does treat some critically ill medical patients, such as people having heart attacks.
He estimated before the ER conversion about one half of all heart attack patients came to hospital by car, rather than ambulance. While ambulances no longer bring critically ill patients to Douglas Memorial, some people still present at the hospital on their own, often thinking they have something less serious wrong with – such as indigestion – when in fact its a more serious cardiac problem.
“We still get those drive-ins despite all of the publicity (to the contrary).”
Henry bemoaned the fact that it has, in his opinion, become more difficult in recent years to transfer patients to Erie County Medical Centre, a recognized leader in trauma care, in recent years.
“That’s the bureaucracy of Ontario. They don’t want their patients going to Buffalo,” said Henry.
Both Henry and Kitts supported in principle an idea put forward earlier in the inquest by Welland surgeon Dr. Peter Willard, who suggested while Niagara may not be big enough to warrant a full trauma centre, there may be some merit in pooling resources currently spread out across the NHS’s three largest hospital sites into a single location.
A model for this kind of thing already exists in Niagara. All stroke patients are taken to Greater Niagara General hospital in Niagara Falls, which is home to a dedicated stroke team.
Pooling resources into one site could maximize the use of available manpower. With high volumes of patients, medical staff would have more opportunity to hone their skills.
Kitts suggested a feasibility study would need to be done first to fully explore the idea and determine whether it makes sense to have a dedicated trauma unit and where best to locate it.
“It isn’t just flip a coin and pick the best (hospital site),” Kitts said.
The inquest continues Tuesday.
*****
Note, in the above two stories, the two completely different reports (highlighted in context above) about Dr. David Henry's testimony -
Alison Langley of the Niagara Falls Review reported this:
Fort Erie family physician Dr. David Henry testified that prior to the NHS's reorganization of Douglas Memorial, the hospital was capable of stabilizing serious trauma patients so that they could be transferred by ambulance to another facility.
That ability, he added, remains in effect.
"Our capabilities remain the same, it's just that we lost the designation of ambulance destination."
Since the reorganization, Henry added, the volume of patients going to Niagara Falls and Welland hospitals have "totally clogged up their ERs."
...while John Robbins of Niagara This Week reported this:
Among those who protested the changes was Dr. David Henry, a Fort Erie family physician and emergency room doctor, who was also called to testify at the inquest on Monday.Like Kitts, Henry said Douglas Memorial was not equipped to handle trauma cases like Reilly Anzovino at the time the ER was converted to an urgent-centre, nor had it been able to do so for many years before.“I don’t think Fort Erie or Port Colborne would have made a difference (in Anzovino’s case),” said Henry
Which of these versions is accurate?
Did DM have the "capabilities" to treat and stabilize trauma patients before DM lost its ambulance destination designation (as Henry seemed to be saying in Langley's story), or, were these capabilities not there at all, regardless of the Anzovino incident, as Kitts seems to be saying?
It's like these two reporters were at two different hearings - not when it came to what Kitts was saying, but what Henry was saying.
Robbins wrote that Henry seemed to agree with Kitts that DM was not equipped to handle trauma cases, and hadn't been for years.
Yet Langley reported of Henry saying that 'prior to the NHS's reorganization of Douglas Memorial, the hospital was capable of stabilizing serious trauma patients so that they could be transferred by ambulance to another facility. That ability, he added, remains in effect'.
Furthermore, why isn't anyone examining specifically why Buffalo's medical facilities aren't being more often utilized? Why is or isn't ECMC being utilized by Ontario? Have patient transfers to the U.S. from Ontario (especially Niagara) gone down? Has -as Henry says- it become more difficult to send patients to the States??
Why aren't any reporters asking these questions? They've had three years to examine the issue! Why - in the last three years - has no local press ever bothered to ask Niagara's secretive Liberal health care monopolist Jim Bradley about his government's policies on patient export; especially in light of how smug Liberals such as Bradley, Smitherman, and Dalton McGuinty loved to demean and denigrate the American health care model - which is there, available across the river in the U.S., but which would be illegal if it was on McGuinty's side of the river. What have Bradley's Liberals done to remove "bureaucratic obstacles" when it comes to emergency patients being forced to leave Ontario because Bradley's monopoly can't provide for them here?
Aren't the politics of Liberal bait-and-switch health-care monopolism part and parcel of this inquest?
Kitts tells us:
"The public felt they had a full-service hospital, but in reality they didn't," he said.
At an inquest probing the death of Reilly Anzovino, Kitts testified Douglas Memorial had not been a full-service hospital since the mid-1990s.
Is this a 'blame Harris' move by Kitts?! If so, the St.Catharines Standard will be ebullient with this !! See, toldja: it's Harris' fault!! Kitts says DM has not been a full service hospital since the mid-90's; yet, Henry says that DM was capable of treating trauma victims, until the HIP cuts! Well, which version is correct?!
And - 'if in reality, DM was not a full service hospital' as Kitts says - then what exactly did McGuinty's Liberals do about that, since 2003???!!! Were Kim Craitor's and Jim Bradley's Liberals running a NON-FULL-SERVICE hospital in Fort Erie, and passing it off to the public as something else?
Oddly enough, no local reporters are scrambling to ask Kim Craitor or Jim Bradley about that!
Henry says the 'bureaucracy of Ontario doesn't want patients taken to Buffalo'; why aren't the local Niagara reporters looking into that? This isn't, um...news to them - is it? McGuinty's Liberals control Ontario's bureaucratic health monopoly!
Where are all the investigative reports from Niagara This Week, the St.Catharines Standard, the Niagara Advance, the Niagara Falls Review, over the last eight years, detailing their local MPP's comments and responses to their Liberal healthcare monopoly's patient export policies?!
Good luck finding anything about that from Niagara's press.
Notice the spin Robbins puts on Dr. Kitts as being the person who "gave the thumbs up" to the HIP . Kitts was hired by the NHS to review the HIP which the LHIN had forced the NHS to produce. Interestingly, Robbins - and his editors - just plain forgot to mention that the Liberal LHIN had the final authority to approve the HIP for implementation! This wasn't Kitts' call, all on his own; nor the NHS's call, all on its own.
It was the Liberal's LHIN which had demanded that a HIP be created by the NHS, and it was the Liberal LHIN - when it got its ducks lined up in the way which McGuinty's Minister of Health wanted - which then approved the HIP's implementation.
Robbins doesn't bother mentioning that the LHIN - after considering the HIP, even after considering Kitts' "thumbs up" review of the HIP - could have gone another way, and not approved it. Robbins forgot to report that it was ACTUALLY McGUINTY'S LIBERAL LHIN which gave the FINAL "thumbs up" to the HIP, and which ordered the NHS to then implement the HIP.
Funny, how these wee wittle factoids just seem to get lost in the statist-friendly narrative. The NHS did not close/re-purpose the Fort Erie and the Port Colborne hospital ER's all on its own: the decision to do so was approved and finalized BY McGUINTY'S LHIN.
Also note another amazing thing:
that in the last THREE YEARS, Liberal MPP Jim Bradley has never been interviewed by his Fan Club in the press about his views regarding the Jack Kitts HIP report!! Dare you to find anything about Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's reaction to and comments about the Jack Kitts HIP review!!
More pathetically: no-one's bothered to ask Ole Jimmy about that since! And: no-one's asking him NOW!!!
Why isn't George Smitherman, McGuinty's former health minister, the person responsible for the HIP, testifying at this inquest?!
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Alison Langley wrote in "Douglas Memorial not equipped to handle serious trauma cases, inquest told" (posted Dec.12, 2011, Niagara Falls Review):
Douglas Memorial Hospital was not equipped to handle serious trauma cases long before the Niagara Health System proposed its emergency department be downgraded to an urgent-care centre, an Ottawa physician who reviewed the NHS hospital improvement plan said Monday.
While he understands residents can be "very passionate" about their local hospitals, Dr. Jack Kitts testified there were a lot of misconceptions surrounding the NHS's plans for the Fort Erie and Port Colborne hospitals."The public felt they had a full-service hospital, but in reality they didn't," he said.
At an inquest probing the death of Reilly Anzovino, Kitts testified Douglas Memorial had not been a full-service hospital since the mid-1990s.
The hospital did not have a surgeon on site and it did not have diagnostic tools such as a CT scan.
Paramedics have taken patients from the Fort Erie area to hospitals in Niagara Falls, Welland, St. Catharines or Hamilton for a number of years, he added.
"Severely injured patients should not go where they can't be helped," Kitts told the three-woman, two-man jury.
The Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network in July 2008 appointed Kitts to review the feasibility of the NHS hospital improvement plan.
Kitts hosted a number of town-hall forums across the region to consult the public on the controversial plan.
"There was a lot of media (coverage) and a lot of negative reaction by physicians and members of the community," Kitts said.
Kitts' report, released in November 2008, largely endorsed the NHS restructuring plan, which recommended the emergency rooms at Douglas Memorial and Port Colborne General be downgraded to urgent-care facilities.
Less than two months later, Anzovino suffered critical injuries following a two-vehicle collision on Highway 3 between Fort Erie and Port Colborne.
Paramedics rushed her to Welland County General Hospital where the 18-year-old college student was pronounced dead.
"My heart goes out to the Anzovino family," Kitts said. "I have two daughters myself. I really feel for you."
Fort Erie family physician Dr. David Henry testified that prior to the NHS's reorganization of Douglas Memorial, the hospital was capable of stabilizing serious trauma patients so that they could be transferred by ambulance to another facility.
That ability, he added, remains in effect.
"Our capabilities remain the same, it's just that we lost the designation of ambulance destination."
Since the reorganization, Henry added, the volume of patients going to Niagara Falls and Welland hospitals have "totally clogged up their ERs."
In his review, Kitts supported the NHS proposal of creating centres of excellence as a way to save money, and to concentrate resources to ensure the best quality care for patients.
"Instead of having five separate hospitals all fighting for limited resources, use the five together to benefit the whole Niagara peninsula by creating these centres of excellence," he told the jury.
He said a Welland surgeon's suggestion last week that an NHS site be designated as a trauma centre could fit in that "centre of excellence" definition.
Such a proposal, he added, would require an extensive feasibility study.
The nearest designated trauma centre in Ontario is Hamilton General Hospital.
Henry said the closest trauma centre, Erie County Medical Centre in Buffalo is less than 15 minutes from Fort Erie.
Bureaucratic obstacles, however, have made it "near impossible" to get approval to send patients across the border, he added.
The inquest continues today in Welland.
******
John Robbins reported in "ER conversion not to blame: Kitts
Dr. Jack Kitts testifies at Anzovino inquest" (Dec.12, 2011 Niagara This Week):
The man who gave the thumbs up to Niagara’s controversial hospital restructuring plan three years ago says the conversion of emergency departments in Fort Erie and Port Colborne in no way contributed to the death of Reilly Anzovino.
Dr. Jack Kitts, president and chief executive officer of the Ottawa Hospital, took to the stand at the inquest probing the December 2009 death of the 18-year-old Fort Erie teen, who had been critically injured when the car she was a passenger in spun out on an icy stretch of Highway 3 almost midway between the Port Colborne General and Fort Erie’s Douglas Memorial hospitals.
Kitts, who in the summer of 2008 was asked to review the Niagara Health System’s so-called hospital improvement plan, testified before the inquest Monday in Welland the ERs at Douglas Memorial and Port Colborne General had been treating few seriously ill patients and virtually no trauma patients for more than a decade by the time the NHS redesignated the ERs at those two facilities “urgent-care centres.”
Rather than some kind of overnight change, the conversion happened gradually as a result of changes in medical technology that left the two hospitals behind as well as the loss of on-call general surgery capability.
“They (the ERs) had converted over time to that,” said Kitts. “This was a formalization of what they had become.”
Sitting in the witness chair a few dozen feet away from Reilly’s parents, Tim Anzovino and Denise Kennedy, both of whom have been attending the inquest every day it has met since Oct. 31, Kitts offered his condolences on the loss of their daughter.
“My heart goes out to the Anzovino family,” said Kitts. “I hope with the passage of time something good can come out of this.”
Just what can be done to prevent similar deaths – one of the key questions the five member inquest jury has been charged with answering – remains unclear.
All previous witnesses at the inquest have said they know of nothing that could have been done to save Anzovino, who, according to medical witnesses, went into cardiac arrest as the result of massive internal bleeding caused by the force of the collision around 11:30 p.m. on Boxing Day 2009.
Bad weather contributed to a delay in getting Anzovino to hospital by ambulance. By the time she arrived at Welland County General hospital about an hour later, she was considered VSA or vital signs absent.
The emergency room team at Welland County General spent more than 50 frantic minutes trying to revive her in hopes of sending her to surgery to stop the internal bleeding.
The ER doctor who worked on Anzovino that night testified last week that her injuries were so extensive that even if the accident had happened outside a specialized trauma centre, such as Hamilton General or Toronto’s Sunnybrook hospital, she likely couldn’t have been saved.
None of the NHS hospital sites is a designated trauma centre, which would typically have a team of specialist surgeons and nurses and at least one operating room ready at all times to receive critically injured patients by land or air ambulance.
Kitts said the “definitive care” for trauma patients such as Anzovino is such a trauma centre – including near by Erie County Medical Centre, in Buffalo.
If unable to transport to one of those facilities, the next best place for trauma patients to go is one of the NHS’s three larger hospitals – Welland County General, Greater Niagara General and St. Catharines.
While not trauma centres, all three of those hospitals have on-call general and orthopedic surgeons and anesthesiologists.
The hospital improvement plan, or HIP as it has come to be known, is nearly three years into the implementation-phase, and it has failed to gain widespread support from either the medical community or from citizens.
The plan was first made public in 2008. It’s a five-year strategy to improve the quality of care at Niagara hospitals and balance the NHS budget by 2013.
To achieve these goals, the plan calls for a sweeping reorganization of hospital services across the region by clustering clinical programs into what are termed “centres of excellence.”
Only a portion of the changes envisioned in the plan have been implemented, such as the conversion of emergency rooms at hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne into urgent care centres.
Many of the proposed changes, including the closure of maternity and pediatric wards in Niagara Falls and Welland, are contingent upon completion of the new St. Catharines health-care complex.
Kitts said it while in Niagara in 2008 reviewing the plan and repeated it again at the inquest Monday: The centres of excellence make for a “critical mass” of patients, where medical staff and expensive equipment can be used to their maximum potential.
“If you don’t have critical mass, you won’t have the best (care),” said Kitts, adding it’s sometimes better for a patient to travel further for the most appropriate care rather than go arrive sooner at the nearest hospital, which may not be able to provide the proper care.
The hospital improvement plan is no more popular today than in 2008, when thousands of people in Fort Erie and Port Colborne rallied in opposition to the changes at their community hospitals.
Kitts said many people in both communities were and likely still are under the wrong impression that they had a full-service hospital at the time the ERs were converted to urgent-care centres.
Among those who protested the changes was Dr. David Henry, a Fort Erie family physician and emergency room doctor, who was also called to testify at the inquest on Monday.
Like Kitts, Henry said Douglas Memorial was not equipped to handle trauma cases like Reilly Anzovino at the time the ER was converted to an urgent-centre, nor had it been able to do so for many years before.
“I don’t think Fort Erie or Port Colborne would have made a difference (in Anzovino’s case),” said Henry. Fort Erie did at one time have a general surgeon, but he retired in the mid 1990s and was never replaced. After that, the hospital did mostly minor procedures and day surgeries until the operating rooms were closed for good as part of the hospital improvement plan.
Although the hospital still has a supply of blood products and at least one doctor working around the clock inside the urgent-care centre, Anzovino needed surgery to stop the internal bleeding, said Henry.
In cases were a person suffers major injuries in an accident, they are better off going to a full-service hospital where there is a surgeon available.
“It’s as simple as that,” said Henry.
Despite the conversion to an urgent-care centre, Henry said Douglas Memorial still does treat some critically ill medical patients, such as people having heart attacks.
He estimated before the ER conversion about one half of all heart attack patients came to hospital by car, rather than ambulance. While ambulances no longer bring critically ill patients to Douglas Memorial, some people still present at the hospital on their own, often thinking they have something less serious wrong with – such as indigestion – when in fact its a more serious cardiac problem.
“We still get those drive-ins despite all of the publicity (to the contrary).”
Henry bemoaned the fact that it has, in his opinion, become more difficult in recent years to transfer patients to Erie County Medical Centre, a recognized leader in trauma care, in recent years.
“That’s the bureaucracy of Ontario. They don’t want their patients going to Buffalo,” said Henry.
Both Henry and Kitts supported in principle an idea put forward earlier in the inquest by Welland surgeon Dr. Peter Willard, who suggested while Niagara may not be big enough to warrant a full trauma centre, there may be some merit in pooling resources currently spread out across the NHS’s three largest hospital sites into a single location.
A model for this kind of thing already exists in Niagara. All stroke patients are taken to Greater Niagara General hospital in Niagara Falls, which is home to a dedicated stroke team.
Pooling resources into one site could maximize the use of available manpower. With high volumes of patients, medical staff would have more opportunity to hone their skills.
Kitts suggested a feasibility study would need to be done first to fully explore the idea and determine whether it makes sense to have a dedicated trauma unit and where best to locate it.
“It isn’t just flip a coin and pick the best (hospital site),” Kitts said.
The inquest continues Tuesday.
*****
Note, in the above two stories, the two completely different reports (highlighted in context above) about Dr. David Henry's testimony -
Alison Langley of the Niagara Falls Review reported this:
Fort Erie family physician Dr. David Henry testified that prior to the NHS's reorganization of Douglas Memorial, the hospital was capable of stabilizing serious trauma patients so that they could be transferred by ambulance to another facility.
That ability, he added, remains in effect.
"Our capabilities remain the same, it's just that we lost the designation of ambulance destination."
Since the reorganization, Henry added, the volume of patients going to Niagara Falls and Welland hospitals have "totally clogged up their ERs."
...while John Robbins of Niagara This Week reported this:
Among those who protested the changes was Dr. David Henry, a Fort Erie family physician and emergency room doctor, who was also called to testify at the inquest on Monday.Like Kitts, Henry said Douglas Memorial was not equipped to handle trauma cases like Reilly Anzovino at the time the ER was converted to an urgent-centre, nor had it been able to do so for many years before.“I don’t think Fort Erie or Port Colborne would have made a difference (in Anzovino’s case),” said Henry
Which of these versions is accurate?
Did DM have the "capabilities" to treat and stabilize trauma patients before DM lost its ambulance destination designation (as Henry seemed to be saying in Langley's story), or, were these capabilities not there at all, regardless of the Anzovino incident, as Kitts seems to be saying?
It's like these two reporters were at two different hearings - not when it came to what Kitts was saying, but what Henry was saying.
Robbins wrote that Henry seemed to agree with Kitts that DM was not equipped to handle trauma cases, and hadn't been for years.
Yet Langley reported of Henry saying that 'prior to the NHS's reorganization of Douglas Memorial, the hospital was capable of stabilizing serious trauma patients so that they could be transferred by ambulance to another facility. That ability, he added, remains in effect'.
Furthermore, why isn't anyone examining specifically why Buffalo's medical facilities aren't being more often utilized? Why is or isn't ECMC being utilized by Ontario? Have patient transfers to the U.S. from Ontario (especially Niagara) gone down? Has -as Henry says- it become more difficult to send patients to the States??
Why aren't any reporters asking these questions? They've had three years to examine the issue! Why - in the last three years - has no local press ever bothered to ask Niagara's secretive Liberal health care monopolist Jim Bradley about his government's policies on patient export; especially in light of how smug Liberals such as Bradley, Smitherman, and Dalton McGuinty loved to demean and denigrate the American health care model - which is there, available across the river in the U.S., but which would be illegal if it was on McGuinty's side of the river. What have Bradley's Liberals done to remove "bureaucratic obstacles" when it comes to emergency patients being forced to leave Ontario because Bradley's monopoly can't provide for them here?
Aren't the politics of Liberal bait-and-switch health-care monopolism part and parcel of this inquest?
Kitts tells us:
"The public felt they had a full-service hospital, but in reality they didn't," he said.
At an inquest probing the death of Reilly Anzovino, Kitts testified Douglas Memorial had not been a full-service hospital since the mid-1990s.
Is this a 'blame Harris' move by Kitts?! If so, the St.Catharines Standard will be ebullient with this !! See, toldja: it's Harris' fault!! Kitts says DM has not been a full service hospital since the mid-90's; yet, Henry says that DM was capable of treating trauma victims, until the HIP cuts! Well, which version is correct?!
And - 'if in reality, DM was not a full service hospital' as Kitts says - then what exactly did McGuinty's Liberals do about that, since 2003???!!! Were Kim Craitor's and Jim Bradley's Liberals running a NON-FULL-SERVICE hospital in Fort Erie, and passing it off to the public as something else?
Oddly enough, no local reporters are scrambling to ask Kim Craitor or Jim Bradley about that!
Henry says the 'bureaucracy of Ontario doesn't want patients taken to Buffalo'; why aren't the local Niagara reporters looking into that? This isn't, um...news to them - is it? McGuinty's Liberals control Ontario's bureaucratic health monopoly!
Where are all the investigative reports from Niagara This Week, the St.Catharines Standard, the Niagara Advance, the Niagara Falls Review, over the last eight years, detailing their local MPP's comments and responses to their Liberal healthcare monopoly's patient export policies?!
Good luck finding anything about that from Niagara's press.
Notice the spin Robbins puts on Dr. Kitts as being the person who "gave the thumbs up" to the HIP . Kitts was hired by the NHS to review the HIP which the LHIN had forced the NHS to produce. Interestingly, Robbins - and his editors - just plain forgot to mention that the Liberal LHIN had the final authority to approve the HIP for implementation! This wasn't Kitts' call, all on his own; nor the NHS's call, all on its own.
It was the Liberal's LHIN which had demanded that a HIP be created by the NHS, and it was the Liberal LHIN - when it got its ducks lined up in the way which McGuinty's Minister of Health wanted - which then approved the HIP's implementation.
Robbins doesn't bother mentioning that the LHIN - after considering the HIP, even after considering Kitts' "thumbs up" review of the HIP - could have gone another way, and not approved it. Robbins forgot to report that it was ACTUALLY McGUINTY'S LIBERAL LHIN which gave the FINAL "thumbs up" to the HIP, and which ordered the NHS to then implement the HIP.
Funny, how these wee wittle factoids just seem to get lost in the statist-friendly narrative. The NHS did not close/re-purpose the Fort Erie and the Port Colborne hospital ER's all on its own: the decision to do so was approved and finalized BY McGUINTY'S LHIN.
Also note another amazing thing:
that in the last THREE YEARS, Liberal MPP Jim Bradley has never been interviewed by his Fan Club in the press about his views regarding the Jack Kitts HIP report!! Dare you to find anything about Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's reaction to and comments about the Jack Kitts HIP review!!
More pathetically: no-one's bothered to ask Ole Jimmy about that since! And: no-one's asking him NOW!!!
Why isn't George Smitherman, McGuinty's former health minister, the person responsible for the HIP, testifying at this inquest?!
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