Various Veins
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Since last week's rant about the cold-bloodedness of Stephen Harper in relation to health care I have been made aware by a reliable source that I was wrong. I apologize.
I should have known better but rage at the state of health care in Ontario blinded me. Max Stewart, a life-long friend, told me about the waste when the Tillsonburg hospital was being rebuilt. Max was mayor of Bayham at the time. He vowed never to donate another dollar to the hospital.
Lack of money for operating hospitals is a matter of budgetary priorities.
Tillsonburg hospital has a facility for doing MRIs. It was bought with money donated by the public. Remember the thermometer graph that recorded the growth of donations?
When I was a member of the local branch of the Order of St. John, I attended meetings in the board room of TDMH. The furniture was suitable for royalty.
There are other causes of shortage of services. A specialist may be required to take a course in communicating with clients in a sensitive way. While the specialist sits in a lecture room the clients are waiting for results to tests.
Bright-eyed ideas like this are not limited to health care. In another public service someone decided it would be better to send all telephone bills to one desk to be paid. This had two effects that raised the cost to tax-payers. Bills were vetted in the local offices to make sure personal use of phones was not charged to tax-payers. No one vetted them at the central desk. Phone service was suspended at local offices for late payment. Besides the disruption to work, it generated a reconnect charge.
When I had cataract surgery at University Hospital in London the building was spotless. Today according to my informant who has personal knowledge of conditions, the place is mold-infested to the extent employees and patients are in danger. Why? Because custodians are fired to meet budgetary limits while administration is a behemoth.
Nurses, too, are fired for budgetary reasons which results in closing of wards and patients being stacked in corridors. It has nothing to do with Stephen Harper.
This sense of entitlement crosses every level of society from senators to administrators and beyond. Advertisers cultivate it with slogans such as, "I am worth it!"
A woman drives a car through the streets of New York thinking, "All these people, and only one me!" How many cars does that sell?
When Martha and I were in our child-bearing years we always owed a doctor's bill. Then the doctors in Ontario created Physicians Services Incorporated, PSI. The insurance scheme worked. Doctors got paid. We had no outstanding bills. The Tommy Douglas health care philosophy spread across the country. OHIP killed PSI because all Ontarians must be treated equally. Doctors became civil servants. Is it any wonder that in today's climate they may opt to act like civil servants and refuse to work part of each year for no pay?
The late Dr. Donald Hevenor asked what will happen when costs outrun the ability of the new system to meet them? We know the answer, and it ain't pretty.
And so, my informant is right. No matter how many dollars are distributed to provinces, nothing will change. They will be sopped up in the sponge of entitlement and patients will still be suffering and dying in hospital corridors and queues.
It isn't limited to health care. Roads are pot-holed across the land while dollars are burned in labour disputes and who knows what other stupidities?
Prime Minister Harper is being pecked to death by media, political opponents, parades demanding the opening of flood gates to economic migrants posing as refugees.
I am sorry for adding to the clamor before learning the facts. And I am grateful for my informant's putting a check rein on me.