Smitherman's Overpowering Stench of Liberal Incompetence

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Adam Radwanski wrote in "DIFFERENT STANDARDS: Deb Matthews unlikely to be given a pink slip over Ornge controversy", (Globe and Mail, Jan.20, 2012):

Little more than two years ago, Dalton McGuinty set an ostensibly high standard for ministerial accountability.
It didn’t matter that David Caplan bore less responsibility for the mess at eHealth Ontario than his predecessor, George Smitherman. Mr. Caplan was the Health Minister when the scandal over contracts and expenditures broke, and was judged not to have done enough to prevent it. So he was dumped from cabinet, never to return.
Based on that precedent, the woman who replaced Mr. Caplan should be feeling pretty nervous about now. The controversy at Ornge, the province’s air-ambulance service, bears a striking similarity to eHealth in the way it has unfolded – an ambitious system reform implemented in some haste under Mr. Smitherman that has blown up in a successor’s face. In some ways it might actually be worse, since the current controversy goes beyond business practices to life-and-death questions about the quality of emergency services.
But the early signs are that, while she’s in for an unpleasant few weeks or months, Health Minister Deb Matthews will keep her job. And Mr. McGuinty will be left trying to talk his way around a cruel reality of politics – that different ministers are subject to different standards.
Mr. Caplan, although well-liked by many of his colleagues, was considered dispensable by the Premier. Despite his senior posting, he was never quite in the top rung of cabinet, and he wasn’t central to the government’s plans. Although he had files that he tried to move forward – notably, and admirably, mental health – he was something of a placeholder.
Ms. Matthews is a different story. In fact, with the exception of Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, she’s the one front-bencher Mr. McGuinty can’t afford to lose.
Ms. Matthews has been tasked with flattening health-care spending increases at about 3 per cent annually – a monumental challenge that’s central to the government’s hopes of eliminating its $16-billion deficit. Largely based on trouncing the province’s pharmacists in a fight over prescription drug costs, the Premier’s office is convinced she’s the minister best suited to winning necessary battles with vested interests.
Even beyond her own portfolio, Ms. Matthews plays a pivotal role in her party. Along with Municipal Affairs Minister Kathleen Wynne, she carries tremendous sway with the Liberals’ centre-left. And Mr. McGuinty is counting on her to help get buy-in, including from many of her cabinet and caucus colleagues, for the government’s austerity agenda.
But, of course, Mr. McGuinty won’t just come out and say any of this. And that’s going to place him in a very difficult position if, for instance, ongoing investigations show any conflict between the air-ambulance agency’s non-profit, public operations and its private ones – not to mention if other investigations show deficiencies in emergency responses. Amid allegations that Ms. Matthews was warned about problems with Ornge and didn’t take sufficient action, how will the Liberals explain why Ms. Matthews gets to keep her job, when Mr. Caplan didn’t?
In part, it appears, they will do so by trying to direct blame toward Mr. Smitherman – something they stayed away from during the furor over eHealth, when he was preparing to run for mayor of Toronto.
Mr. Smitherman didn’t win any friends earlier this month when he wrote to the Toronto Star accusing his successors of failing to oversee or even understand Ornge’s operations. And while Mr. McGuinty hasn’t publicly criticized his former minister, other Liberals have been increasingly willing to take potshots.
The Liberals will also try to draw a distinction between eHealth and Ornge, by noting that the latter functions far more independently than the former, and thus lends itself less to ministerial oversight.
And to some extent, they'll just wait until we start talking about something else.
Among the reasons Ornge has got so much attention lately is that the government hasn’t been making much other news. That will change within the next few weeks, when the release of economist Don Drummond’s public-service report kickstarts a tumultuous budget process. Next to the spending decisions to come, controversy over an agency that receives $150-million annually may seem like small potatoes.
Still, it’s highly unlikely that opposition politicians will be able to resist calling for Ms. Matthews’ head when the Legislature returns next month. And since Mr. McGuinty gave them their pound of flesh last time, it will be hard to blame them.
*

Of course, Deb Matthews must be fired for what has transpired under her watch: McGuinty MUST take accountability for the Liberal-approved piles of policy sh!t which Smitherman left stinking, hidden throughout Ontario.

Smitherman was McGuinty's hand-picked glorious golden boy; McGuinty gave Smitherman free reign to destroy health care throughout Ontario. Smitherman's actions are a direct reflection of McGuinty's poor judgement.

If Caplan got his ass kicked out for essentially what Smitherman did, then the same should apply to Matthews. ORNGE is McGuinty's fiasco as well as Smitherman's: let's not forget, Smitherman WAS ALSO McGUINTY'S hand-picked Deputy Premier of Ontario!! These stinking piles of Liberal crap which still fester in Ontario were not perpetrated by some low-level Liberal hack, these policy fiascos came right from the top, from the highest positions in a Liberal majority, untouchable government!!  This goes right to the heart of McGuinty's faulty "trust" in Smitherman, a mis-judgement which has now been revealed in spades. McGuinty must act to recognize the utter fiasco which Smitherman created - under McGuinty's tutelage.

AdRad writes that McGuinty tasked Matthews with "flattening health care spending increases"! Sounds like a polite euphemism for "health care cuts" - y'know, the kind of "cuts" which Good Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley had often enjoyed sanctimoniously chortling about, when he smear-mongered 'harris' in opposition!

AdRad doesn't quite get to the rest of the frightening Liberal ideology which is at play here: that these cuts - ooops: 'flattened increases' - are occurring to a populace trapped within a Liberal no-patient-choice, morally and financially bankrupt, state-controlled monopolist setting.
*

Smitherman's Liberal stench still haunts Ontario

Martin Regg Cohn in the Toronto Star, Jan.11, 2012, noted how that disastrous former Liberal hack George Smitherman's festering turds are still smelling throughout Ontario.
Earlier on it was David Caplan who found Smitherman's piles of eHealth shit sticking to him; then we had Smitherman's secretive multi-billion-dollar GreenFear-instigated Samsung deal; now it's Deb Matthews' turn to wipe Smitherman's droppings from her shoes, dealing with the air ambulance fiasco, which has Smitherman's stench all over it, though Furious Diaperman claims he had nothing to do with this dump:

"...Last month, infuriated by a series of Star articles, she [Matthews] sidelined the charismatic Chris Mazza from his perch as CEO — he of the egregious $1.4 million annual income.
This week, she swept aside the rest of that legacy by bouncing the interim ORNGE president and the entire board. The affiliated Ornge Global Solutions — whose questionable side deals were shrouded in secrecy — will be wound down.
Matthews is not covered in glory here, nor are the Liberals. The government ignored persistent opposition questioning for months, and it took sustained coverage in the Star to ratchet up the pressure.
But she has acted decisively against an organization that was midwifed by her government and is still heavily staffed by Liberal insiders. Mazza’s rise to power at ORNGE came courtesy of former health minister George Smitherman, who eagerly embraced his vision for a privatized air ambulance service. As with ORNGE, Smitherman’s fingerprints are also on eHealth — another notorious political albatross that Matthews inherited.
But in retirement, Smitherman refuses to wear any of this, blaming his successors for dropping the ball and insisting he would never have let things get out of hand. In an 800-word letter-to-the-editor published online last month, he lashed out at the Liberal government.
“That the ministry did not conduct proper oversight, and did not (as of two days ago) understand what was happening at ORNGE, is a commentary on my successors and the ministry,” he argued. “The lack of a defence of the Ontario Air Ambulance service shows a withering backbone that day in and day out becomes a more prominent feature of the current government.”...
*
Smitherman will probably also deny that he had anything to do with the NHS's HIP; that it was all solely somehow Harris' fault... oh, and Debbie Sevenpifer's... but certainly neither he nor his LHIN had anything to do with it!!
And, so what about that continuing C.difficile outbreak in Niagara in 2011-12? Only 40 patients dead?! What's that got to do with Smitherman's secretive Liberals in 2008 quashing a C.difficile public inquiry, at a time when hundreds of  C. diff patients died in Ontario?
Cohn could look into that, seeing as that Niagara's local Liberal friendly press couldn't be bothered to.
*
By Jan.19, 2012, the CBC  and  CTV were reporting about 4 alleged deaths in relation to ORNGE.
*

Can Niagara trust the NHS's new Liberal-appointed hospital Supervisor?

The Sept.10, 2011 St.Catharines Standard story "Hospital Improvement Plan review gets a new direction" reported that the phony HIP review (by that Soviet-sounding Tripartite Committee, proposed earlier by Deb Matthews, and eagerly cheered for by Niagara's municipal Liberals) is suddenly being cancelled, apparently to be merged somehow with Liberal-appointed NHS Supervisor Kevin Smith's review of the NHS.

Municipal Liberals - such as ya-fooled-me-once, you-can-fool-me again, please Vance Badawey, barked long and hard for a NHS review, yet caved in to Smith the first chance they got.

Too bad that no-one - including Smith - is bothering to investigate the role of  the Liberal-created LHIN, which both demanded and approved the NHS's HIP!!! Oooops... can't talk about that!! Might lead to questions about George Smitherman and McGuintry's Liberal cabinet!!

Of course, no-one's asking any Liberal to explain where their promised province-wide LHIN review has disappeared; you know, the one which Liberal liars McGuinty and Smitherman said would regularly occur, when they first came up with their puppet-LHIN's?

You can bet Supervisor Smith isn't going to ask about that - Smith reports to the LHIN; to the Liberal government!!

Smith's only been around the NHS officially about a week, yet he has already concluded that "the illness is trust" of the NHS. No word from Smith about whether the illness might be a distrust of the Liberal lying majority government - to whom he reports.

Smith also gives us a lecture that "I believe in the Canadian Way, and that is compromise."...

 ...(reporter Shawn Jeffords wasn't clear in the story whose capital "W" that was - his or Smith's; is there a specific "Canadian Way" which Smith adheres to, or are we just supposed to nod in respectful agreement and pretend to know what this "Way" is? Is this the Tommy Douglas Way of socialist "compromise", ie my way, or no way at all?)...

... telling us that "With one exception, we never, ever, ever compromise on high-quality care for patients"

With all due respect, Mr. Smith, maybe you can save your rhetoric, which is already sounding suspiciously like typical boiler-plate Liberal political hogwash; maybe we should let a criminal court decide on behalf of patients what the exact definition of "high quality care" is; and how McGuinty's Liberals "compromised" Niagara's patients and hid from their obligations as self-appointed single-payer managers of their health monopoly.

Kevin Smith also is already telling us not to expect any new NHS health care funding, and, that any changes will have to be taken from other areas within the NHS - which is exactly what the former NHS board had been forced to deal with for years, due to the Liberals'-pre-rationed funding!  Smith is now strangely echoing seven years' worth of previous Liberal duplicity, sounding pretty much EXACTLY like George Smitherman, David Caplan, or Deb Matthews! And this is what Niagara's happy municipal Liberals such as Badawey wanted from Smith?!

But when Smith finally says "If we want to spend more in one place, we have to spend less in another",  he is now crossing the line: THIS IS NOT SMITH'S CALL TO MAKE.

THIS IS A POLITICAL STATEMENT, totally out of Smith's purview as an administrative Supervisor.

SMITH'S STATEMENT SHOULD NOT BE ACCEPTED as fact; it is fear-mongering.

By saying this, Smith is acting as a despotic single-payer MONOPOLY apologist; as a spokesman, not for the patients, but for the Liberal government.

Kevin Smith was NOT elected, and is simply a civil servant appointee - but one who already, unfortunately, seems to be operating as a government agent.

I want to hear Liberal MPP's Jim Bradley and Jim Craitor repeat and confirm what their newly appointed supervisor has said. Who will dare ask health care monopolists Jimmy'N'Kimmy to confirm that their Liberal health monopoly - which they fund and control - must continue to spend less? Let them explain why they cut and ration health-care in their monopoly, yet, don't allow Ontario citizens to arrange for their own private health-care?

Will the St.Catharines Standard's Shawn Jeffords or Wendy Metcalfe be contacting Liberal MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor, asking them why they have abdicated their political responsibilities to their NHS appointee?

This is really starting to stink - already - and I'm fearful that, despite earlier high hopes, Smith is just a convenient Liberal shill.
*

The NHS's HIP was 100% Liberal-made

An interesting, yet quite misguided, lettter appeared in the July 23, 2011  St.Catharines Standard by John G. Bullivant, titled "Creating more problems".
Bullivant wrote (regarding the Niagara Health System's HIP)  "...it is difficult to understand why the NHS board of trustees, whose decisions created the problems in the first place, was then empowered to solve them."
You know what is truly difficult to understand? People who actually think that only the NHS created "the problems". (see another misguided Bullivant letter here)
Is this guy serious?
Time to replay the facts (again):

#1 - the NHS DID NOT originate the HIP.

#2 - George Smitherman was trying to cover up the 2007-CIHI-report which revealed that the NHS had the third-highest patient mortality rate in Canada. (see here; here)

# 3 - Liberal MPP Kim Craitor whined about governance reviews at the time - but did not bother to ask or explain WHY the NHS had this horrible death-rate. (see here)

#4 - Liberal MPP Jim Bradley also said nothing about the NHS's high mortality rate.(see here)

#5 - to this day, no Liberal has yet publicly explained the reasons for the 2007 CIHI revelations about the NHS's high-death rate. (see here)

# 6 - Smitherman, to appease Craitor, suddenly demanded that the NHS cut its spending - yet, no mention was made, by any Liberal, about the NHS's death-rate! Smitherman ordered cost-cutting reviews at the NHS, which led to the LHIN ordering the NHS to create a HIP plan. (see here)

# 7  - obviously, Bullivant doesn't remember this stuff.
In case Bullivant and others like him forgot, the LHIN's were created by Smitherman. The Niagara LHIN was tasked with ordering the NHS to come up with a HIP plan. (see here)

#8 - the NHS DID NOT  just come up with the idea of the HIP all on its own.
The NHS was ordered to create a HIP by the Liberal government which controls it, and pays its bills. What utter dis-ingenuousness to pretend that the NHS did all this, all on their own, in some policy vacuum!! That's what Liberals want us to think!

#9 - Bullivant and others like him should now understand that the McGuinty Liberal government, through their LHIN-smokescreen agents, directed the activities at the NHS.
The HIP at the NHS was 100% Liberal-made. Bullivant should try to grasp that reality.

#10 - the Niagara LHIN, a Liberal-created, completely non-independent proxy of the McGuinty monopolist government, not only ordered the NHS to create the HIP plan, but this same LHIN also approved the HIP plan, after the recommendations of the Kitts Report were taken into consideration.

#11 - for some reason, the Bullivants of Niagara don't remember this.
The Bullivants blame the NHS for creating 'the problems' - yet 'the problems' were created by the Liberals and their LHIN!
The LHIN approved the NHS's HIP plan - the same plan which Smitherman and his Liberals (through their LHIN agents) demanded that the NHS come up with, in the first place!
The NHS complied with what its monopoly-pushing Liberal masters had ordered them to do!
The NHS did what their boss - Liberal hack Smitherman - told them to do; so why can't Niagara's Bullivants understand that?!
Doesn't Bullivant see this catch-22 circle, orchestrated by McGuinty's Liberal health-care monopolists?!

#12 - McGuinty's Liberals had no problem whatsoever with the HIP which their LHIN imposed upon the NHS!
Have we all forgotten how George Smitherman, then David Caplan, and then Deb Matthews all were quite happy with the HIP, and REFUSED to RECONSIDER it? (...until the last minute, just before an election!!!!)

#13 - so when Bullivant now talks of how 'the people who created the problems are being empowered to solve them', doesn't he see that this is exactly the deception which Jim Bradley and his Liberals set in motion?
Bullivant believes the Liberal deception that 'the NHS is to blame' and that the 'NHS board is to blame, and so doesn't seem to understand that it was the the Liberal-controlled LHIN which created 'the problems', and which is laughably now in charge of the solutions!!

    (...busy beaver Liberals, busily um... 'fixing' what other busy Liberals had umm... been busily 'fixing' before...! ... an eternal Liberal make-work project, a socialist wet dream)

Yes:
this is the same LHIN which demanded that the NHS come up with a HIP in the first place; the same LHIN which then approved the HIP; and this is the same LHIN which ordered the NHS to begin implementing the HIP!!
And now this same LHIN is supposedly going to "solve the problems which the NHS created" ???! Come on!!!!
This was a Liberal-orchestrated fiasco by McGuinty's monopolist Liberals since day one.
The LHIN created the problems - not the NHS!!!
Yet the Bulivants pretend that Ontario's Liberas had nothin' to do with it!!!!!

This is the travesty of the non-independent, loyal LHIN doing the dirty work of McGuinty's health monopolists, while the locals, tanked up on monopolism, are led to believe by deceptive doofuses such as MPP Kim Craitor that the NHS is solely responsible for everything that's going on, and that the LHIN's are doing a great job! 

The Bullivants and the Craitors and the left-wing media in Niagara are loathe to connect the Mess In The NHS to the LHIN or to Dalton McGuinty's fascist health monopolism.
For the purposes of the Liberal-friendly narrative, the NHS must be blamed, while the LHIN's and the LHIN's Liberal-creators and policy-makers are to be given a free pass.
*

Why were C. diff deaths kept secret?

Brett Clarkson reported in "One death during 2008 C.diff outbreak, NHS says":

"The Niagara Health System has revealed that a patient died after acquiring C. difficile during the last outbreak at Greater Niagara General Hospital in 2008.

"We have confirmed with (Niagara Region) Public Health that there was one death associated with the 2008 outbreak of C. difficile at the GNGH site," said NHS interim CEO Sue Matthews.
Speaking at the NHS' daily C. difficile media briefing at GNGH in the Falls, Matthews said that at that time and even now, hospitals are not required by the Ministry of Health to report C. difficile deaths and because of that non-obligation to report, the hospital did not make the death public at the time.
That previous outbreak in the Portage Rd. hospital's Unit C ward lasted from Dec. 5, 2008 until March 5, 2009, with The Niagara Falls Review reporting at the time that there had been six confirmed cases and one suspected case of C. difficile in the unit. At the time, no mention was made of the death.
It was a reporter's question during a NHS media briefing on the current C. difficile outbreaks that sparked the recent revelation, said Matthews.
Underscoring the NHS' recent pledge to be more transparent with the public, Matthews said the NHS has changed its ways since the 2008-2009 outbreak in the Falls and that now, that death would've been disclosed.
"Hospitals were not reporting deaths at the time of this outbreak and in our new culture, this death would've been reported in a timely fashion," Matthews said.
Because of patient confidentiality legislation, the NHS has not and will not be releasing the patient's name, but on Wednesday Matthews said it was still unclear as to the exact date of the death or even how old the patient was. Officials were still trying to find out more information by checking records, Matthews said.
Manwhile, the current outbreaks have so far been linked to the deaths of 13 patients at the St. Catharines General Hospital, four patients at GNGH, and six patients at the NHS' Welland hospital, according to NHS figures.
Although the total number of deaths reported by the NHS is 24, media have been reporting 25 deaths.
This is because a C. difficile-linked death that happened at the same time of the St. Catharines outbreak is not counted by the NHS because it is not considered to be an outbreak-related case.
As of Wednesday there was still a total of 75 cases confirmed since the first C. difficile outbreak in St. Catharines was declared on May 28.
There were 21 patients confirmed to have C. difficile at the St. Catharines General, which was up two from Tuesday. At GNGH, there were 14 patients in the hospital, down one from the day before. As well, Welland's total number of in-patients with C. difficile rose by one to eight in total.
In the smaller local hospitals, there was still one non-outbreak related death associated with the Niagara-on-the-Lake hospital, where there was still one patient in hospital with C. difficile. As well, there was three cases at Fort Erie's Douglas Memorial Hospital and three cases at the Port Colborne hospital.
Clostridium difficile, a bacteria found in the intestines, can cause severe diarrhea and potentially life-threatening intestinal ailments such as inflammation of the large intestine, extreme inflammation and distention of the colon.
Matthews also said that she anticipates that the NHS will face criticism when NHS documents pertaining to a Hamilton media outlet's freedom-of-information (FOI) request are released in the coming days.
Despite previous attempts to try to block the release of information, Matthews said the NHS will fulfill the FOI request after removing any references that might breach provincial confidentiality legislation.
According to an April 12, 2011 ruling from an adjudicator with the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, the media outlet had asked for "all documents, reports, correspondence, e-mails, briefing notes and minutes pertaining to Clostridium difficile in the Niagara Health System since 2007."
Asked if the info will essentially make the NHS look bad, Matthews said she expects that it might.
"I expect that there will be some questions about our infection-control practices in the past and I think what we need to do is focus on going forward," Matthews said. "We will learn from the past. I believe we have.""
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'Looking bad'?! Are you kidding? This is more than that - this skulduggery should be for a criminal court to judge.
This whole thing about not reporting C. difficile deaths goes back to my July 4, 2008 post here, where the Hamilton Spectator reported that "Dr. Michael Baker, the Ontario patient safety adviser in charge of designing the reporting system, says there will be a standard definition for what constitutes an outbreak. But there is no intention to require hospitals to report deaths."
This effort not to focus on the C. difficile patient deaths has been standard procedure under the Liberals.
We are still being told by the NHS that, on the one hand, "hospitals are not required by the Ministry of Health to report C.difficile deaths", but then, we're also being told that the NHS has a sudden 'new culture', and now C.diff deaths would be reported; so, which is the official policy here?
Is the Health Ministry's original stance (ie - hospitals are not "required" to report C. diff deaths) still in effect (as Sue Matthews says) elsewhere in Ontario, or has this been over-ridden as specific local policy, ie, that hospitals always had the ability to report these deaths, but they didn't, because the Liberals told them they didn't have to.
In other words, being "not required to report" didn't mean that a hospital couldn't report! So the question then is: if  hospitals, province-wide, didn't have to report - but could, nevertheless, report their C. diff deaths - why didn't more hospitals opt to report?? Why the allowed secrecy; why did Smitherman and Caplan allow this lax default-"not required to report"-position, instead of making it law that these outbreak deaths (any outbreak) must be reported??
And this patient-death information is what the Hamilton Spectator was trying to pry out of the Liberal's secretive health monopoly province-wide in 2008.
*
Maybe Good Ole Secretive MPP Jim Bradley can explain his Liberal government's position ... except that no media outlet in Niagara dares to ask Jimmy about this...
*

The filthy health care hospital pit known as the Liberal Jim Bradley Wing

Here is C.J. Duffy's shocking July 13, 2011 letter in Niagara This Week:

Has C.J. Duffy contacted St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley about this filthy health-care pit?

Jimmy and Deb Matthews are in charge of Ontario's health care system - where is secretive Liberal Jim Bradley's response to this letter? This occurred in Bradley's own St. Catharines riding! Why is Jim Bradley utterly mute on this issue? (I'm sure - hardee-har-har - that Mike Williscraft is sending a NTW reporter to Bradley's office asap!) Bradley hasn't bothered to publicly respond to this letter either!

Oh, yeah.... and why isn't St.Catharines mayor, the always-oh-so-so-soooo-concerned Brian McMullan 'demanding answers' to this single-payer health-care travesty in his city?! Why isn't Mayor McFullofit demanding that his monopolist buddy Jim Bradley publicly address Mr. Duffy's concerns?? (yeah: as if...)

Until June 20, 2008, George Smitherman was McGuinty's monopolist health minister, after that date in 2008, it was David Caplan - have either of these two Grits replied to Duffy's concerns; has Duffy contacted either of them about his dismal, frightening experiences at the St.Catharines NHS franchise of McGuinty's Liberal health-monopoly?

The NHS only mops on Friday - yet, Jim Bradley only answers questions what - once a FLICKING year??? There's no water to wash your hands - yet Jim Bradley and Dalton McGuinty have washed their hands of any complicity for the Mess in the NHS!!

McGuinty's disgusting Liberal health-monopoly-pushing despots need to be punished for the disaster they have foisted onto Ontario's patients.
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Good riddance to another McGuinty Liberal monopolist

It is great to see that David Caplan - one of McGuinty's health ministers who repeatedly refused to re-examine the HIP which  Smitherman's LHIN had forced the Niagara Health System to create under severe political duress - is quitting.
Former health minister Caplan should also be accountable in any subsequent criminal investigations regarding his secretive Liberals' culpability in avoiding any public investigation into the hundreds of  C. difficile deaths in Ontario in 2006-08 (with false reassurances that an inquiry wouldn't tell the Liberals anything new about C. diff than they already knew; it's unbelievable, but that is what McGuinty's monopolists said...) and the subsequent 2011 C. difficile deaths in Niagara (22 dead as of Jul.14, 2011).
Hope Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor soon join Caplan in Liberal hell.
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Why isn't Deb Matthews investigating her own Liberal-created LHIN's?!?

The St.Catharines Standard reported on June 1, 2011 that Liberal health minister Deb Matthews now wants a review of the NHS's HIP plan!!

This is the same flip-flopping health minister who's been saying all along (as did former Liberal health minister David Caplan before her) that her Liberal government was satisfied with the HIP plan, and was not going to review it!!

Suddenly, with an election looming, it's time for McGuinty's Lying Liberals to pretend that they are oh-so-proactive regarding health-care; to portray the illusion that they will be studiously looking into all these problems - as if these same Liberal scumbags had nothing to do with creating the problem in the first place!!! (see here)

At least Peter Downs bothered to clearly state in his St.Catharines Standard report that "the NHS undertook its Hospital Improvement Plan [HIP] two years ago on the orders of the LHIN to cut its ballooning operating deficits..." lest Liberal MPP Kim Craitor get a little hazy on the history of who actually caused this problem in the first place: his own Liberal-created LHIN!!!! (see here)

Yep: this stink goes all the way back to Craitor moaning about the NHS (after the NHS in St.Catharines had the honour of being named by CIHI in 2007 as having the third-highest patient death-rate in Canada; see here)

Craitor's Liberals, shamefully, didn't bother to actually investigate why St.Catharines had this high patient death-rate!  McGuinty and Jim Bradley said nothing whatsoever about that (see here) - and to this day, June 2011, not one Liberal has bothered explaining to St.Catharines residents why their local health monopoly had this high-death rate. (see here)
{Note: as of  May 2018 - with another Ontario provincial election about to begin - the St. Catharines Standard had NEVER BOTHERED to ask Jim Bradley about the deaths in his Liberal health care system, in HIS OWN CITY. The Standard has kissed, protected and coddled Jim Bradley's Liberal ass for decades, and let him get away with figurative murder.}

George Smitherman, McGuinty's Liberal health minister at the time, then rewarded Craitor's demands for a 'review of the NHS' by forcing his newly-created Liberal LHIN to cut the deficits at the NHS!!
Please, take a while to read and  actually understand what happened!!(...and there was NO MENTION  at all from McGuinty's secretive Liberals about the high patient-death rate in St.Catharines!! The high-NHS-patient-death-rate issue was COMPLETELY swept under the proverbial table.
{The local fake-news rag, the St. Catharines Standard, made it their business to deflect from the issue and to distance ANY Liberal from what had happened under the Liberals' watch. They STILL do that.}

So the Liberal-created, Liberal-appointed, Liberal-funded LHIN did what its Liberal political masters told them to do: the LHIN ordered the NHS to create the HIP and to begin cutting; see here.
Liberal MPP Kim Craitor apparently has a hard time understanding this chain of command, and the timeline! (see here)

Kimmy would like to think that Debbie Sevenpifer came up with this HIP scheme; see here. Craitor seems to think - and wants others to believe - a fable that the NHS did this all on their own!!
Craitor has never asked for a review of the LHIN !!
It is crucial to carefully note and remember Craitor's craven, politically-motivated, self-serving response' to recall the gist, the nuance, of his deflective response: Craitor is fixated on a review of the NHS (because it was created years ago under Harris) and NOT a review of the LHIN (which was created by Craitor and his Liberals. That was the disgusting narrative pursued by the Liberals and by their media enablers) (see here; see here)

The reason is purely political: Craitor wants to blame Harris for creating the NHS. Craitor needs to deflect from the fact that it was his Liberal-created LHIN which ordered the NHS to create these HIP cuts. (see here)

The NHS's LHIN-enforced creation of the HIP had nothing whatsoever to do with Harris: Craitor can get down on his hands and knees and thank George Smitherman for that. The LHIN took their orders from the Liberal health minister.

Also, let's not forget this other critically important fact: not only did the LHIN force the NHS to create the HIP, it was the same LHIN which subsequently APPROVED the HIP before allowing the NHS to implement it!! Funny how the local media don't bother to focus on that! The local media's narrative is mostly a Liberal echo-chamber, obediently following the Liberal lead to blame the NHS, and to ignore/deflect any examination of the LHIN's direct role in creating this HIP mess.

(By the way: where is the mandated review of the LHIN's which was supposed to have been done, as was promised by Smitherman and his lying Ontario Liberals?!?! This is another bald-faced Liberal lie and deception - and nobody is bothering to ask Jim Bradley or Deb Matthews about that!!! see here)

Note that Craitor - along with the now suddenly oh-so-concerned Deb Matthews - are NOT focusing on the LHIN - the LHIN which they created, and which was the original source of the problem, and which did lead directly back to McGuinty's cabinet and to McGuinty's health minister Smitherman! See here)

The Liberals do not want to investigate the LHIN's culpability - just the NHS's... (see here) ...even though a cornered Dalton McGuinty, in order to shift responsibility from his Liberal cabinet, did blame the Niagara LHIN back on Jan.27, 2010!! That's right: a slick McGuinty pretended that he knew nothing about the two hospital emergency room closures in Niagara, and diverted the blame onto the LHIN - as if the LHIN (all on its own) had come up with this cost-cutting scheme to force the NHS to create the HIP!!  Uneffinbelievable!!

Seeing that McGuinty himself  has openly blamed the LHIN for Niagara's ER closings - then why are Kim Craitor and Deb Matthews ignoring the LHIN, and instead focusing on the NHS ?!?!?!?!?!

The LHIN was dancing to health-care-monopolist Smitherman's tune back then, when it ordered the NHS to create the HIP. This was an order from McGuinty's Liberal government, after all; and the NHS had to comply with what the LHIN ordered them to do: see here.

And now, we're seeing the same thing - the LHIN is doing what it has been told by its Liberal puppet-masters: suddenly the LHIN has "agreed to a recommendation from Ontario health minister Deb Matthews to order a third-party review of the NHS hospital overhaul"!

The LHIN is again doing what the Liberals tell it to do, just as the LHIN was following Liberal political orders to force the NHS into creating and implementing their HIP. (see here)
It was a LIBERAL-MANDATED and a LIBERAL APPROVED HIP!!

Craitor can now stop pretending that his Liberal government had nothing to do with creating the HIP in the first place.

Craitor and Deb Matthews should be investigating the culpability of the persons who are giving the LHIN's their orders: specifically, their own Liberal cabinet!!.

Maybe McGuinty's secretive Liberals can also explain to the public why Ontario's ombudsman is not investigating the LHIN's!!!!
*

The NHS is not an independent organization

Re:"Council calls for NHS probe" (St.Catharines Standard, Feb.11, 2011; and no, reporter Matthew Van Dongen couldn't be bothered to provide any comments in this story from Liberal Jim Bradley - typical St.Catharines Standard Grit ass-kissing; oh how Henry Burgoyne would be proud)...

... it's interesting to see how Niagara's puffed-up Liberals are now running around, screaming for some kind of investigation of the NHS - yet not one of these Liberals has ever demanded a public explanation from Liberal MPP Jim Bradley about what his McGuinty-led Liberal disaster of a government has done to health care in Ontario!

What FLICKING kind of "investigation" do they want?! The Ombudsman is the only one who can deal with the secrecy surrounding the NHS, whose decisions are made by the LHIN and by the Ministry of Health! The ombudsman was not allowed to "investigate" the NHS; Jim Bradley and his secretive Liberals spent the last seven years hiding their entire health-care monopoly - not just the NHS - from independent scrutiny!

Now, disgusting  Liberals such as Jim Diodati and Debbie Zimmerman and others squawk self-righteously about the NHS, as if the NHS is somehow a self-reliant and independent organization; as if the concept of Liberal-forced ideological single-payer health-care monopolism HAS NOTHING to do with any of their concerns; as if everything the NHS does isn't approved by its superiors at the LHIN and the Ministry of Health!!!!!!!

They're all now squawking about the HIP {the Hospital Improvemnt Plan}- the same HIP which we were just told WAS NOT the reason why former NHS CEO Debbie Sevenpifer was (mysteriously) fired! 

No McGuinty-Liberal-government official has yet told us why Sevenpifer was fired, and yet, why the rest of the NHS's board of directors (who all implemented the HIP) are still there!
Somehow the Liberals on the municipal level are all complaining about the HIP, as if the evil HIP was the only thing wrong with the NHS health-care monopoly!! {clue: the word "monopoly" !!}

Let's remember - for the hundredth time - that the HIP which these sanctimonious Liberals are whining about was FORCED upon the NHS by Dalton McGuinty's own Liberal health minister George Smitherman!!
  Please read the previous line again, because mentally-impaired Liberals and their drooling sycophants CANNOT GRASP THIS FACT.

The (false) urban legend propagated by the yellow-shirt socialists and the municipal Liberals is that somehow McGuinty's Liberal monopolist government has scant little to do with anything that happens at the NHS! (Their fake narrative pretends that the NHS is somehow self-financing, self-ruling, and independent of Ontario's government!!)

Let's remember these facts:
1 - the Liberals were happy to accept Smitherman's great Liberal health-care plans. Smitherman ordered the NHS to 'save money' - do not forget this fact!
2 - Smitherman ordered  the Ministry of Health to force the NHS to create a HIP.
3 - Smitherman's Liberals approved the NHS's HIP proposals.
4 - Dr. Jack Kitts approved the NHS's HIP.
5 - The McGuinty/Smitherman-created LHIN then also approved the HIP.
6 - The Liberals then ordered the NHS to implement the HIP.
7 - and, that 3 Liberal Health Ministers - including George Smitherman, then David Caplan, then Deb Matthews - also REFUSED to reconsider the NHS's HIP [...the HIP, by the way, which they had instigated in the first place!]

In other words: McGUINTY'S LIBERALS WERE SOLELY IN CHARGE OF INSTIGATING and then of IMPLEMENTING THE NHS HIP - there was NO 'autonomy'; nor any 'independence'; nor any 'local self-rule' of any kind whatsoever on the part of the NHS: McGuinty's Liberals fully ran the show!
 (Liberal hack MPP Kim Craitor has a hard time understanding the last several paragraphs) McGuinty's Liberal pipers played the tune; the NHS had to dance.

The board and CEO of the Niagara Health System did what McGuinty's Liberals ordered them to do:  that's what happens in a state-run single-payer health-care monopoly.
So, if  the Diodatis and Zimmermans want to "investigate" the NHS, they better start with examining George Smitherman's role in forcing the NHS to create the HIP; and, they better examine Dalton McGuinty and his Liberal cabinet's role in supporting the NHS's HIP!!
Will this "probe" look at the Liberal government's role in mis-managing their failing health monopoly, or will the scope of this "investigation" be limited only to the NHS, thereby shifting the focus away from the culpability of the Liberal government?! After all: aren't the Liberals ultimately accountable for what happens in their monopoly?

This (false) urban legend -  this fairy-tale that somehow the NHS's board of directors are independent (and thereby "accountable") - continues with this letter by John G. Bullivant "NHS board should be held accountable" (St.Catharines Standard, Feb11, 2011):

Re: NHS boss gone (Jan. 20).
Niagara Health System Board of Trustees chair Betty-Lou Souter is factually wrong in stating that "hospitals are not unlike businesses or large corporations" insofar as a comparison between their respective organizational structures will clearly show a critical and significant difference with respect to the fundamental matter of who they are accountable to in terms of leadership, transparency and governance.
In the "business and large corporate" world, a board is held accountable to its shareholders. However in the NHS world, the board has no such restriction, and is in fact accountable only to itself. In other words taxpayers do not have the same influence as a shareholder as to whether we agree or not with its standards of leadership, transparency and governance.
Because of this imbalance of accountability, surely it is not unreasonable for taxpayers to expect, and indeed be entitled to have, the highest level of leadership, transparency and responsible corporate governance associated with an organization employing 4,150 people (599 physicians) in six locations with an operating budget of $400 million.
Whether we do, or not, is a subjective decision, but by reading the reports printed in The Standard on Oct. 28, 2008, (Poll shows health system dissatisfaction and NHS doctors vote in favour of non-confidence motion) the board of trustees under the leadership of its chair must be held responsible for creating the negative NHS profile/ image of mistrust, lack of confidence and a mutual suspicion with its medical staff association, the public and, until December 2010, the censure of the Ontario Nursing Association.
If indeed the NHS board was accountable to shareholders, you can be very sure that they too would have reached their "crossroads and opt for a change" a long time ago, and would have done so by replacing the current chair of the board whose current term finishes in June of this year."

Contrary to Bullivant's BS, the NHS board IS NOT "accountable only to itself"!! WTF?!

The NHS is "accountable" to its master, the Liberal government-created LHIN, to the Ministry of Health, and to the McGuinty Liberal cabinet; but under this definition of "accountable": seeing that the NHS is a state-run monopoly, "accountability" here means "following orders". "Accountability" in a monopoly means "obedience" to the monopolist-payer who calls the shots. That is the only kind of  "accountability" possible here - BECAUSE A PATIENT CANNOT - BY LAW - PAY FOR SERVICES!!!
That is exactly the kind of NON ACCOUNTABILITY which is inherent in the very monopolies that Liberal despots love!!

Do ya get it ?!? (see another disingenuous Bullivant letter here)

The NHS is beholden to the only PAYER: Dalton McGuinty's Liberals! (...and not to the taxpayer, as Bullivant feverishly BS's; for the political construct of the monopoly is to BY-PASS accountability to the tax payer!! Funny that lovers of monopolism don't demand accountability from Ontario's Liberals - instead, they cover up the Liberals' glaring role and instead deceptively focus on the red-herring of the NHS!

And, this isn't just in the "NHS world", as Bullivant BS's:  every hospital in Ontario's health monopoly is beholden to the Ontario government!!
What deception to pretend that somehow, the NHS is an anomaly, and that somehow, no Liberal health minister set this entire HIP fiasco in motion!!!
The NHS board, the LHIN, the MoH - these are all layers of unaccountable bureaucracy; these are lackeys, all puppets controlled by the state! The NHS is subservient to, and reports to, McGuinty's Liberal government!

The NHS IS NOT an independent organization; it's a cog in the state-run health monopoly - it's simply a POLITICAL FRANCHISE.

Do ya get it!?! Yet? How long do Liberal sycophants take to climb out of their foggy concepts?

Monopolies such as the NHS are accountable to the government first, NOT to the patient; you can thank Tommy Douglas. (the fake monopolist's 5-buck 'hero')

There is NO "accountability" in the normal sense which would commonly apply when talking about a private endeavour! How does one "make" a fake mechanism (ie a fixed-health-care-monopolist market) "accountable"?! What does that term even mean in a state-run monopoly?! It's meaningless!!
Nevertheless, Bullivant attempts to treat apples as oranges.

The conceptual framework of what health care 'is' in Ontario...
 [...once again, read this and repeat until understood: it is a state-run single-payer monopoly]
... is simply overlooked in Bullivant's letter!
Thus, being "accountable" to "shareholders" in a state-run, non-competitive health monopoly is an oxymoron. Tax-payers are but figurative 'shareholders', this is all a socialist smokescreen: the taxpayer is simply a convenient teat for socialist ideology; socialism doesn't invite troublesome shareholders who are independent and responsible; it appoints lackeys who are obedient and know their place. The socialists now want to "elect" hospital boards - yet, how will these boards "get" their money? From the taxpayer's teat?! That's "accountability"?! That's yet another smokescreen-charade.

Only when patients pay for their own health care will hospitals, their boards, and their staff, have real accountability - and real responsibility. They would be obligated to perform for their patients, not be protected by a socialist, unaccountable health care monopoly.

Monopoly health care is all about empowering the statist status-quo, rather than about empowering patients. And it's all about pretending that Liberals such as Jim Bradley have nothing to do with health-care, while other Liberals run around pretending they're going to fix health-care! Yep ... do ya get it now ?!!
*

Who is the "real boss" at the Niagara Health System?

Regarding Grant Lafleche's story "Meet the new boss", (St.Catharines Standard, Jan.29, 2011), it's quite clear that the 'new boss' is cut from the same cloth as the 'old boss'; that the 'new direction' is the same as the monopolist 'old direction'; that it's 'potatoe / pot-ah-toe' time at the NHS; and that this is nothing more than pre-election bait and switch in the Liberal government-run health monopoly.
Of course, Lafleche hasn't the time, or inclination, to tell us - seeing that Sue Matthews is as enthusiastic about the NHS's HIP plan as now-fired Debbie Sevenpifer ever was - why, then, was Sevenpifer thrown under the bus?
Why hasn't the rest of the NHS board resigned, or been fired?
Was Sevenpifer culpable of something, yet the rest of the board was somehow held harmless?! [...Remember when a Soviet-sounding-Smitherman, the Liberal health-care-cutter, was propagating the idea that this was a "people's system"?! But "the people" have no say in it, and have no right to even know why the NHS's CEO was fired!]
Why is the NHS not under a supervisor's control, whereby the ombudsman would have had the authority to fully scrutinize the NHS's past and present finances and governance models and the CEO's and boards' performance?
[Hmm, isn't "governance model of the NHS" Kim Craitor's favourite cry? So why was the proper way to get this independent investigation/ evaluation - by firing the entire NHS board and appointing a Supervisor - not been done by Craitor's own secretive Liberals?]
Not that Lafleche knows such answers, but, did this reporter even ask ?
Were any Liberals asked to comment on this health-care story?
Reading this article, there is no mention of the Liberal government's role in the change at the NHS. As we all should know by now, the so-called "boss" which Lafleche refers to in his story, is not a "boss" at all: the NHS is run, funded, and controlled by the monopolist Liberal government.
The real 'bosses' at the NHS are the Liberals; the NHS is a pawn of the Liberal government, and the NHS board and chair are merely government lackeys. Their 'independence' is a monopolist charade.
So maybe that's why the St.Catharines Standard can't bring itself to mention the local Liberals whose government actually controls the NHS, and, who are the real bosses of the NHS.
It's best to perpetuate the illusion that the "bosses" at the NHS are "real", and that the real bosses, Kim Craitor and Jim Bradley, have nothing to do with the NHS!
Why, reading Lafleche's article, one would be at a loss to figure out what, if anything, any Liberal could ever possibly have to do with anything at the NHS!!!!  [The St.Catharines Standard has demonstrated a clear propensity for protecting  local Liberal Jim Bradley's ass and treating him with kid-gloves, spinning stories so that Bradley either is made to look good, or, he's not mentioned at all.]
Why, this is all arm's length from Kimmy n' Jimmy! hahahaha!
The Liberal government has nothing to do with the NHS; or with the LHIN that oversees the NHS; or with the Ministry of Health which oversees the LHIN! hahahaha!
Look at how Lafleche writes that the HIP, "approved in 2008, repurposed emergency rooms in Port Colborne and Fort Erie into urgent-care centres". [..."Repurposed"?! That's a cute new euphemism for 'Two hospital emergency departments closed by McGuinty's Liberals". Seeing that this is an election year, apparently it's best not to mention the words Liberals, cut, or closed, in any health-care stories...]
Wow: no mention at all by Lafleche as to why or how this "repurposing' occurred!! Certainly, no Liberals were hurt by the spin of this velvet-gloved story!
The HIP was just magically "approved"?????!!!!!! Wow: approved by whom?! Lafleche doesn't quite get around to that.
Why wasn't George Smitherman's role as Liberal health minister mentioned, when Smitherman forced the Ministry of Health to force the LHIN to force the NHS to create the HIP?
Where was Lafleche's contextual explanation about how, after the HIP was created by the NHS (as it was told to do), that the HIP was subsequently approved by Dr.Jack Kitts, and then after that, also approved by the LHIN, which then ordered the NHS, under then-CEO Sevenpifer, to implement the HIP?
Lafleche also forgot to mention that subsequent Liberal health ministers David Caplan, and now Deb Matthews, both refused to stop or even reconsider the NHS's HIP.
So, yeah, believe it: this ole HIP plan just miraculously appeared one day, out of thin air, and was magically 'approved'!!
What could the Liberal government possibly have to do with any of this?!
It's best not to mention them at all!
*

Long ER wait times have nothing to do with McGuinty's Liberals!

Grant Lafleche wrote in "ER back-ups causing longer wait times" (St.Catharines Standard, Jan.28, 2011):

"It was a long 8 1/2 hours for Jim Brady. He understood why his daughter was not at the top of the triage list at the St. Catharines General emergency room.
But the wait seemed like forever, and was one he had hoped to avoid if possible.
"If we know the ER is really busy at, say, 11 or 12 at night, we'll not bring her in until around 2 in the morning to try and avoid the wait," Brady said.
There was no avoiding the wait.
Brady called ahead, but the hospital would not tell him how long the wait time was. His daughter was suffering from serious nausea. She was treated during a previous hospital visit, but the doctor said to come back if the problem returned.
It did, so Brady brought his daughter in last week.
"That's when we saw the sign," he said. "It said the wait was 8 1/2 hours. I understand they are busy, and the life-threatening cases have to go first. But 8 1/2 hours seems too long under any condition."
Unfortunately, the wait times at Niagara ERs have been longer than usual for non-urgent cases, said Anne Atkinson, vice-president of patient services for the Niagara Health System.
Atkinson said the volume of patients has not increased. But what has changed is the number of patients needing cardiac care and those who need to be admitted. That's led to a shortage of beds to move patients into the hospital, meaning many of those patients end up staying in the ER.
"We've cancelled all elective surgeries for the week," she said, although emergency surgeries and cancer-related surgeries will go ahead as scheduled.
While she sympathizes with people like Brady, she said it is not possible for the NHS to post real-time wait times on the Internet or tell people when they call.
"We need staff to be taking care of patients," she said.
Besides, the wait times at the ER are often event-specific. The wait time might be relatively short, but can change quickly because of a car accident, for example.
Atkinson said the ER also does not want to discourage patients from coming in if they need emergency care because of a potentially long wait. If someone needs emergency care, she said that person needs to go to the ER.
Nevertheless, she said the NHS continues to encourage people with non-life-threatening conditions -- like broken bones, fever, cough or sprains -- to use the urgent care centres, like the one on Ontario St. in St. Catharines.
Atkinson said typically, the wait time at the urgent care is about 2.3 hours. Right now, wait times at the St. Catharines ER are longer than the provincial benchmark of four hours, she said, a problem that's exacerbated by the severity of the conditions of current patients at the hospital."
*

Well, we know how Jim Brady feels, but how does Jim Bradley feel about this???

It's funny, eh, how there isn't ANY mention at all in Ole Slant Lafleche's article about how Jim Bradley - who just happens to be the local Liberal MPP whose government runs the hospital monopoly in St.Catharines - feels about what his Liberal policies have done to health care in Ontario!!

Was Liberal MPP Jim Bradley even asked by this slanted Standard reporter/stenographer/propagandist for a comment or explanation?!

Hahahaha... better just to leave Ole Jimmy outta this!!!

{The St.Catharines Standard Bradley Bootlicker should have a warning label on their LiberalFriendly TM biased stories, assuring readers that the story has been sanitized for the reader's political protection, and carefully crafted so that no Liberals were harmed by the Standard's slanted spin!}

Predictably, Jim Bradley conveniently isn't mentioned by the St.Catharines Standard - why should he be?!!! hahahahaaaaa...

It's not like Jim Bradley or his Liberals have anything to do with controlling the monopolist health care system which Brady's daughter had to - was forced to - wait in... right?!?!  In about a half an hour, Brady could have gone to Buffalo, like so many other Ontarians have had to do. Don't tell Michael Moore though.

Gawrsh, just think of how sanctimonious and giddy Ole Jimmy Bradley and the slanted local press would be if this had happened during Mike Harris' watch: both Jim Bradley and Slant Lafleche would be sleeping in front of the evil-Conservative-with-the-hidden-agenda's home, protesting health-care-cuts and trying to get an interview!! No?!

But now... so what? The Standard's slanted spin is to not mention Ole Liberal Jimmy, and not to get Ole Jimmy involved, when the optics ain't good fer Ole Jimmy!!!

Seeing that it's Jimmy's Liberals who are now in charge...
[and have been for the last seven years, in case Kim It's-All-Harris'-Fault Craitor hasn't noticed]
...then this can be easily glossed-over and excused as just a wee wittle hiccup - as Smitherman used to say, these incidents aren't problems with monopoly health-care, these are just mere 'anomalies', hearsay, anecdotes, old wive's tales..! - in other words, it's no biggie! This isn't important enough for Bradley to be involved!

So what that some lowly Ontario patient waited for 8 hours for emergency care! Big Whoop... ya think Ole Liberal Jimmy gives a shit about patients?! Jim Bradley is busy Saving The PLANET!!!

Jimmy's more interested in lickin' Tommy Douglas' dead socialist ass; and the monopoly-cheering-press is more interested in keeping Ole Jimmy as far away from these frequently disturbing incidents as possible.

We all know the song, all together now: Jim Bradley has nothing to do with this!!

McGuinty's health minister Deb Matthews several days ago was dancing with glee in Brantford, telling their local hospital how great they were - even mentioning their low DEATH-RATES. Gary Chalk "reported"...

[...more like gushed.... by the way, Standard reporters: read Chalk's story as a lesson and marvel at its pure Liberal ass-kissing pageantry. This is how monopolist propaganda should be done!! Oh-rah-rah-raahhhh-Liberals-Yippee!!]

...in the Brantford Expositor earlier this week in "Minister celebrates - and washes hands" about Matthews saying:  "You are the No. 1 hospital in Canada for the lowest death rate of patients. This doesn't just happen. All your indicators, all the patient safety indicators, infection rates, are very low here," she said to applause. "Congratulations!"

Yet this same Liberal Health Minister has never bothered to explain the high patient-death-rate in Niagara!! Neither did her predecessor Liberal Health Ministers David Caplan, nor did George Smitherman!

So, Deb: did the high patient death rate "just happen" in Niagara - or was that one planned?! Did the high death rate at the NHS have anything to do with your Liberal health care cuts?

How did all that "happen" Deb?

Feel free to contact the St.Catharines Standard with your "explanation". (Cuz the Standard won't bother asking a Liberal, they're just happy ass-kissing a Liberal, any Liberal...)

Yeah: Deb Matthews "washed her hands" all right: she washed her hands of explaining to Niagarans what transpired under her Liberal government's watch in the LHIN-controlled NHS.

No-one at the St.Catharines Standard has bothered to ask their buddy, Best Boy Jimmy, about that, so why the hell would the Standard bother to involve Ole Jimmy in some two-bit story about a long wait time?!! Feh - Jimmy's got priorities such as building useless arts centres and attending election fundraisers.

Why would the local yokels need an explanation from Jim Bradley about the bed shortages, surgery cancellations and outrageous wait times, in his own riding, in his own Liberal health monopoly? What does MPP Jim Bradley have to do with any of that?!

Like Deb Matthews, Jim Bradley has also "washed his hands" of any responsibility for what is happening in Niagara's Health System.

And the local ass-kissing press conveniently keeps handing Good Ole Jimmy more soap.

*
Here is a good editorial  "Crisis in the ER" (National Post. Jan.28, 2011) (Same day as LeFleche's half-story appeared)

"This just in: Going to the emergency room is hazardous to your health. Not only do you have to worry about whatever afflictions may have brought you there in the first place, but also those you could pick up while you wait -- and wait, and wait.
That is the conclusion of a landmark paper authored by researchers at Dalhousie University, recently published in the international health-care journal BMJ Quality and Safety. According to the study, prolonged waits in the ER put patients at greater risk of suffering "adverse events," ranging from surgical complications, medication errors and c. difficile infections.
Among 982 otherwise healthy elderly patients tracked by the study, the risk of these incidents climbed by 3% for every hour spent in the ER. With average wait times of 20 hours in some provinces, this represents a substantial increase in mortality, not to mention an increase in system-wide pain, suffering and economic costs to the health-care system.
Why does this happen? Researchers theorize that a combination of factors, including immobilization for long periods of time, exposure to infectious disease, a disorienting environment and sometimes incompatible treatments from multiple health-care workers (some of them on different shifts), may increase susceptibility to hospital-induced problems. In the words of author Stacy Ackroyd-Stolarz, "It might push [patients] over the tipping point."
And sometimes that point isn't just illness, but death. Over the last year, there have been several shocking cases of patients dying in Canadian emergency rooms while waiting for treatment.
In December 2010, 41-year-old Marlene Stephens died after waiting an hour and a half at the William Osler Health Centre emergency room in Toronto. According to family members, she was experiencing respiratory problems, and crying out that she couldn't breathe, but was ignored.
In October 2010, at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital in Montreal, a 64-year-old diabetic man, Andre Desjardins, died after a seven-hour wait in a wheelchair, during which he was denied a stretcher, because none were available. In February 2010, an elderly Alzheimer's patient died after a two-hour wait in the same ER.
And then there is the case of Montreal resident Mieczyslaw Figiel. In February 2010, he died in a corridor at Maisonneuve-Rosemont, after his family banged on the window of the ER triage station in a desperate attempt to get help. Nearly one year later, a coroner's report confirmed that the ER was so overcrowded that patients were not being seen until the following afternoon. In the past year, the number of 48-hour waits in Quebec's ERs increased by 15%.
Studies already have concluded that prolonged wait times for surgery can bring on secondary health problems, such as depression or dependency on pain medication. Waiting can also exacerbate the patient's underlying condition, requiring more serious intervention than if the problem had been promptly corrected. Governments promise to remedy the situation--usually by throwing more tax dollars at the problem, yet the queues only get longer. Despite constant increases in health spending, Canadians are waiting 96% longer for surgery in 2010 than they did in 1993, according to the most recent edition of an annual report on treatment wait times, Waiting Your Turn, published by the Fraser Institute think-tank.
More money is not going to cure this condition. According to Nadeem Esmail, the Fraser Institute's former director of health policy, Canadians currently underwrite the developed world's second-most-expensive universal public health system. In an article published in 2009, he notes, "Only Iceland spent more on a universal-access health insurance system than Canada as a share of GDP, while Switzerland spent as much as Canada.... Twenty-five developed nations [that] maintain universal health insurance programs spent less than we did; as much as 38% less as a percentage of GDP in the case of Japan."
Instead of propping up a state-run, monopoly-payer system, in which care is rationed from the ER to the OR, governments should allow the private sector to lift the burden from our overcrowded public hospitals. A mixed-delivery system, such as exists in Europe, where wait times are nowhere near Canadian levels, would create competition and open up more facilities and opportunities for treatment.
To those politicians who cling to an ideology of enforced "equality," we say this: How long do patients have to wait before they get choice in health care? How many have to suffer? How many more have to die?"

Maybe, one day, someone from the St.Catharines Standard will actually pull their head out of Jim 'The Monopolist Enforcer' Bradley's butt, and ask Jimmy those same questions.
I wonder what the wait-time will be before that ever happens.
*

McGuinty's Liberal scumbags find a scapegoat to absolve them from their Niagara Health System health-care mess

Well, look at that: McGuinty's Liberals have just found the scapegoat to take the blame for the Liberal-created mess in the NHS: today they (through the government-appointed, un-elected board of the NHS) fired Niagara Health System CEO Debbie Sevenpifer!

Allan Benner wrote in " 'Crack open the Champagne' " (Welland Tribune website, Jan.19, 2011):

"The change of leadership at Niagara Health System has left some opponents of its restructuring plans wondering if it could also mean a change of direction.

The health system announced Wednesday president and chief executive officer Debbie Sevenpifer is being replaced for the interim by Sue Matthews, vice-president of patient services for Welland and Port Colborne hospitals and chief nursing officer.

"Crack open the Champagne," said Pat Scholfield, from the People's Healthcare Coalition, when she learned about the change of leadership.

But she doesn't "blame all our problems" on Sevenpifer. She said the restructuring her organization has been opposing is the result of provincial government policy.

"I strongly doubt that the plans will change," she said, adding she recently read information on the LHIN website says clearly there are plans to cut another 41 hospital beds in Niagara.

"It's a start, but it will not solve all our problems."

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey said change is imminent.

"I think the board has recognized that there is some direction needed for change," he said, adding he hopes that change will mean the NHS will review its decision to replace hospital emergency departments in Port Colborne and Fort Erie with urgent care centres and the impact those changes are having on south Niagara residents as well as other hospitals throughout the region.

"Now that they've made this move, once again, I would expect that they wouldn't stop short. That they would continue on responsibly to ensure that an operational review as well as a performance review of the HIP (hospital improvement plan) is just around the corner," he said.

This week Health Minister Deb Matthews said a review of the health system is not necessary, and that the community should instead embrace the changes being implemented, including consolidation of pediatrics and obstetrics in St. Catharines.

Badawey said he thinks NHS board members feels differently than the health minister "based on the move they just made."

"Let's face it, I think the minister needs to get a pulse on what's happening here in Niagara with respect to our health-care system."

Welland MPP Peter Kormos was not hopeful that the change of leadership would make any difference to hospital restructuring.

"There will undoubtedly be some schadenfreude with respect to Ms. Sevenpifer's termination," he said, referring to people who might be happy about the change of leadership. "But that will in no way restores hospital services to Port Colborne and Fort Erie."

He said Sevenpifer was "doing the bidding of an unelected hospital board, an unelected LHIN and the (Premier Dalton) McGuinty government. It's as simple of that."

And the change of leadership "is no signal at all that there's going to be any shift in the position of the provincial government when it comes to shutting down small town hospitals," he said.

The health minister has reaffirmed her approval of the hospital restructuring now underway at local hospitals, and "that simply underscores that this is part of a McGuinty Liberal agenda."

He said the change of leadership at the NHS will make no difference to that agenda."

So Pat Scholfield (see here, here, here) and her smug yellow-shirted socialists are drinkin' champagne!! [Or are they drinking Tommy Douglas' and McGuinty's monopolist-poisoned koolaid?] Everyone's celebrating that somehow Kim Craitor and Jim Bradley and Deb Matthews have saved Niagara from the 'tyranny' of Debbie Sevenpifer!

It's astounding, isn't it?

Let's remember that it was (Liberal) Vance Badawey's own Liberal friends who closed the hospital emergency room in Port Colborne!!
Let's remember that it was Dalton McGuinty's Liberal lying scumbags who:
- created the LHIN's;
- who forced the Niagara LHIN to impose cuts on the NHS;
- who forced the NHS to create the ER-cutting HIP plan to 'save money';
- who concurrently underfunded the NHS; and
- who did not object to, but unquestioningly accepted, Dr. Jack Kitts' rubber-stamping of the NHS's LHIN-instigated HIP Report !!

Yet now, these same McGuinty scumbag Liberals pretend that somehow this was all personally caused by Debbie Sevenpifer !?!

Why, look at that folks: it's as if McGUINTY'S LIBERALS had nothing to do with any of this!!!

Un-FLICKING-believeable!!!!!!!!!!!

And yet, Juanita Gledhill is strangely still ensconced as the useless local queen of Smitherman's useless Niagara LHIN!

Sevenpifer has been vilified and sacrificed in order to cover-up the McGuinty Liberals' MASSIVE health-care incompetence in Niagara.

What a vile political act this is, designed and carried out by McGuinty's Liberal monopoly-health-care-pushing fascists.
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Also, Karen Howlett's Jan.19, 2011 Globe and Mail story had this strange bit of bias, which was a little too glib considering the serious nuances in play here:

"Ironically, many of Niagara Health’s current difficulties were triggered by its plans in late 2008 to save $28-million by converting hospital emergency rooms in Fort Erie and Port Colborne into around-the-clock urgent-care centres – essentially walk-in clinics."

"Triggered by its plans"?!  Howlett strangely omits mentioning that the NHS's "plans" WERE FORCED by McGuinty's Liberal government!!

Why would Howlett gloss over this extremely important fact?!
These were Dalton McGuinty's Liberal plans, Karen, forced onto the NHS. Do try to keep up with the nuances of the story, please.

George Smitherman, McGuinty's health minister,  forced  Ontario's Ministry of Health to order the NHS to create a HIP plan! This DID NOT originate from the NHS! The cuts were "triggered" by the Liberal government, through its LHIN!!

( ...and note: this was meant to supposedly 'save money' for the Liberals - although now, the Liberals DENY this! At least Karen Howlett did report that in her 2011 story, for the record:
 "Niagara Health has been embroiled in controversy over the board's decision to permanently close the emergency departments in two hospitals and the exit of four of six doctors who worked in another emergency department.

The latest revelation to dog Niagara Health is that it is running a deficit again. The hospital is forecasting a deficit of $3-million for the 2010-11 fiscal year and $7-million the following year, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Globe. The shortfall comes even though Niagara Health received an additional $14-million a year in funding last February to help cover operating costs.")

What Howlett should have focused on, and for some reason completely missed, were the real reasons why the HIP was created in the first place!

It was Ontario's monopoly-enforcing Liberals who forced the NHS to create the HIP;
it was the Liberals who accepted the NHS's subsequent Dr. Jack Kitts-approved HIP;
and then it was the Liberals who ordered the NHS to implement this LIBERAL-REQUESTED, LIBERAL-APPROVED, and LIBERAL-ACCEPTED, HIP!!

The NHS complied with the Liberal government's every order! The Liberals used the McGuinty/Smitherman-created LHIN as their proxy to do the dirty deed.

The McGuinty Liberal government knew full well every detail of the HIP report. The Liberals knew the hospital ER's were to be closed!! The Liberals knew that the deficits at the underfunded NHS were not going to end!! (....because the Ontario Liberals SET the budgets; the Ontario Liberals create the never-ending 'underfunding' crises!!)
They knew this prior to forcing the NHS to implement the HIP! This was pre-ordained from the beginning.

None of this was a surprise to the Liberals! Yet today, somehow, the blame is all on the NHS, on Sevenpifer, but not on the Liberals who run Ontario's health-care monopoly!

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In Karena Walter's take on this story in the Jan.19, 2011 St.Catharines Standard website, there was, predictably for the Standard, no mention of, or comments from, St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley!! Why should there be? Bradley's got nothin' to do with the health-care system! haha. Was Bradley even asked by the St.Catharines Standard Bradley Bootlicker for his comments on Sevenpifer's firing?

But the pisshead Liberal MPP Kim Craitor was found in the story, whining on about... wait for it... waaaiiit for it: yep - about MIKE HARRIS!!

This disgusting Liberal shit IS STILL blaming Mike Harris for what Craitor's OWN LIBERAL GOVERNMENT has been doing for seven years!!

Kim, remember to say "Thank-you, Mr. Smitherman".

It was Kim Craitor and his Liberal government [...not Mike Harris!] who forced the NHS to create the HIP!
It was Craitor's own Liberal government which did that, proudly led by Dalton McGuinty!
It was Craitor's own Liberal government [not Harris!!] which created the LHIN - which became the NHS's new political puppetmaster!

Kimmy knows all this though; Kimmy knows full well that his own incompetent, monopoly-pushing Liberal hacks have devastated health-care not just in Niagara, but province-wide!
Kimmy's hoping to spread his own version of anti-Harris 'blood-libel', hoping that other insane people will fall prey to believe his disingenuous drivel.

It wasn't Harris who shut down two hospital emergency rooms in Niagara, Kimmy: it was your own Liberal government. You do understand that, eh??????????

[Now, what's interesting about the above-mentioned story by Karena Walter, which appeared on the Standard's website on Jan.19, 2011, is that it was changed the next day (Jan.20) in the actual printed-paper-edition. The following part of the story (which was in Walter's column on Jan.19 on the website) was removed the next day from the printed edition of the same story:

"...Niagara Falls Liberal MPP Kim Craitor said the board's decision won't change the focus of what he's been saying for the past six years — that when the old health care system was brought in by the Mike Harris government, residents were promised the NHS would provide better health care and be more cost-efficient.

"It is time to look and see if we've gotten the results that we were told were going to happen when they restructured," Craitor said.

Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati said the move acknowledges some problems with the NHS, but doesn't go far enough.

"I think it's a good start, but I think the issue runs much deeper than the CEO," Diodati said. "Changing the captain of a sinking ship doesn't really change the problem."

Niagara Falls council voted unanimously Monday to ask the provincial government to appoint an independent investigator to look into the management of the NHS. Afterward, provincial Health Minister Deb Matthews said no investigator would be appointed."

The above paragraphs, which were there in Walter's Jan.19, 2011 web-version of the story, did not appear in Walter's column the next day, Jan.20, in the actual printed edition of the St.Catharines Standard. Diodati's and Craitor's names and comments were completely omitted in the re-edited version of the story!]

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Liberal-pandering can be seen as well, over at Niagara This Week in their Jan.19, 2011 report by Melinda Cheevers, where Cheevers writes that Debbie Sevenpifer "spearheaded the NHS’s controversial “hospital improvement program,” which saw services centralized and emergency rooms in Fort Erie and Port Colborne closed."

Wow - lookit that folks: Debbie just "spearheaded" all this, ALL BY HERSELF!!
Neither Craitor, nor Bradley - in fact, no Liberal, anywhere in Ontario - had anything to do with it!!!! Deb did it all!

No mention at all from "reporter" Cheevers of how Liberals such as George Smitherman and Kim Craitor and Jim Bradley FORCED the NHS into making the HIP cuts!!

No mention from "reporter" Cheevers about how both of McGuinty's health ministers who served after Smitherman - David Caplan and Deb Matthews - also REFUSED to challenge, to review, or to rescind the HIP plan - WHICH THEIR OWN LIBERAL government forced the NHS to make!!
They ALL had a chance to cancel the HIP, yet, they declined to cancel it, and in fact kept on supporting and defending the HIP!! Yet "reporter" Cheevers somehow just plain forgot to mention any of that haha!! Somehow, only Sevenpifer alone was the 'spearheader'!!!

In the fall of 2008, Niagara's scumbag Liberal MPP Jim Bradley SAID NOTHING about the Kitts HIP report, the health-care-cutting plan which Bradley's buddy Smitherman forced the NHS to create and implement!!!

Why would "reporter" Cheevers mention any of this, eh - the Liberals had nothing to do with any of this!! hahahahah. The Liberals are here to help us, bless them...!

Deb did it all. Yep...

"Reporter" Cheevers does make sure to mention Jim Diodati's spouting off about the NHS, but "reporter" Cheevers neglects to report (!) that Diodati is a Liberal hack, who was eager to join McGuinty; so when Diodati now blabs about "the issues go much deeper than the CEO", what's he actually talking about? It can't go much deeper than admitting the complicity of Diodati's own beloved Ontario Liberal monopoly-pushing incompetent party in the NHS's 'problems' - can it, Jim?! Don't Diodati's Liberal asshole buddies Kim Craitor and Jim Bradley have anything to do with this latest Liberal Mess in the NHS?!

We are supposed to believe this crap from Williscraft's ass-kissing Liberal friendly rag, that Sevenpifer personally "spearheaded" all these cuts, while McGuinty's Liberal scumbags - the NHS's monopolist overseers, and Sevenpifer's political superiors - were not in any way involved; and were not the original instigators behind the whole thing!!?

The blatant, disingenuous spin is unreal!

Hope Sevenpifer sues for wrongful dismissal. She's lucky to get out of this Kafka-esque McGuintyist health-care horror.

And, why the hell is Betty-Lou Souter still on the NHS board??

If Sevenpifer was deemed worthy of firing - THEN ALL OF THE NHS BOARD should have been dismissed. As I had written several times, a provincial Supervisor should have been appointed by the Liberals YEARS AGO to take over the NHS and remove the board; thereby enabling constant ombudsman scrutiny of the going's-on at the NHS.

McGuinty's secretive, ignorant Liberals have continuously refused to do that! (see here; here)

This firing of Sevenpifer is a cowardly act, and a hollow "victory" for the yellow-shirt socialist champagne drinkers; this entire government-appointed NHS board is as equally complicit as Sevenpifer was. This whole gang was allowed to operate by, was directed by - and was [under]funded by - McGuinty's Liberal government.
Souter knew it, and has publicly acknowledged this.

In Niagara there are only two persons responsible for Sevenpifer's alleged transgressions: Liberal MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor.
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