The Fraser Institute has just released a report that concludes âprovincial government spending on health care will consume more than half of total revenue from all sources by the year 2020 and all revenue by 2050 in six out of 10 provinces.â? The report, at http://www.fraserinstitute.ca, crunches StatsCan data and is the latest in a growing string of warnings that there soon wonât be enough money to pay for medicare.
Of course, being a think tank that leans to the right, the report offers a right-leaning prescriptive response to the problem â co-payments and allowing patients to pay for private (read better) health care as a couple of examples.
Were it that simple.
We are at the proverbial fork in the road. One way appears littered with unsustainable cost and crushing taxation. The other littered with the bodies of those who canât afford the best care. Meanwhile, we clearly canât afford to continue along the path we have been traveling. Over the next 15 years, there will be tremendous demand to spend more on education, seniorsâ homes, nuclear and green power, drinking water systems and other services and there is a cumulative $100 billion backlog in this province of work to repair and replace roads, sewer and water lines, school buildings, hospitals and other infrastructure.
These figures should send a chill up your spine.
Some, in response to the report, are already calling for the feds to spend more money â effectively to dig us out of a hole by digging a deeper hole. Instead, hard questions need to be asked.
Are hospitals and doctors extorting money out of the province during negotiations? Are unions â for nurses, hospitals and other health care workers â doing the same thing? Is the government to blame for putting political gain ahead of pragmatic decision making? Naturally, easy answers solve nothing. Cut doctor salaries and you get doctor shortages. Same thing with nurses. Cut cleaning staff budgets and hospital infections and other problems soar.
There are, however, choices other than wholesale privatization, spending every provincial tax buck on health care or raiding federal coffers until they too run out. As health minister George Smitherman is fond of pointing out, Ontario doesnât actually have a health care system. It has a disconnected, inefficient and unwieldy collection of loosely affiliated health services â about a third private sector (blood labs, etc) and the rest public.
The spend-more mantra needs to be replaced with a commitment to change.
As a first step we must, for example, embrace electronic health cards. If I can walk into any store in the province, whip out a piece of plastic and walk out the door with merchandise; if, by swiping my debit or credit card through a little machine the retailer gets paid, the bank adjusts my account and everyone involved gets a record of the transaction, then surely to God we should be able to put in place a system where patients, whether they walk into an emergency room, their doctorâs office, a lab or pharmacy, can pull out a card that lets health care providers know their medical history and other relevant information.
At very least, it would be a start at rationalizing the mess weâre in.
canuk: try to understand: “pandering generosity” is not a bad thing.
I use to own a horse. A beautiful male pinto. I was told that he was not going to grow very tall hmmm not true. He was huge, so large in fact that I had to have his bridle special made. He had a mind of his own that one but due to unforseen reasons I had to sell him. The other day, I was driving around in the Picton region and stop to pet some horses. It reminded me of just how much I love those animals, the way they look you in the eye to investigate you when deciding whether or not to trust you to scratch behind their ears, the way they throw their heads up into the air and say yes that is quite enough of that, the way they stomp their feet impatiently when waiting for you to pick them some of that nice fresh grass on your side of the fence, they are majestic beasts of pure power and true love. To me, being called a horse is a very high compliment. Thank you.
just to let everyone know, I did take my parcel to my local police department and yes they do accept parcels (no charge) being sent to our men serving overseas. They do about one delivery every month if they have parcels and one of the employees drives the parcels to Belleville. They have sent out 2 deliveries so far and are going to continue. No excuse to not send a little box of goodies to the boys, I was sure glad to find this outlet because this box weighed a ton…I included along with the kitchen sink, a Rumoli game…hope they like that.
Every year I work in the control room in the Coliseum at Exhibition Place for the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. I program and control the signboard for the Horse Show. Over the years I have enjoyed the grace of dressage, the courage of Olympic equestrians, the haulage of Percherons and Clydesdales. Magnificent creatures well trained with both carrots and sticks. Then there are those mangy mules who think they are equestrianistas.
Horses are made for hauling or mounting.
Giddy up lil’ doggie
One has to realise that this is one mans own perception of what a horse is good for….but I feel that was not what God created them for. Now I wonder what his perception of what a mule is good for !
Ask the Taliban, when they’re not having their way with the goats
you are mr. opinion man…whats the good of donkeys, elephants, llamas, camels, and jackasses….all can be pack animals and all can be mounted.
Then we could move along to bikes, scooters, harleys, met four ladies out for a ride Thanksgiving weekend – one owned horses but said her Harley was the best pack animal she ever owned…and they certainly can be mounted….the bikes that is….however, according to your thoughts I guess you would also include all women into this category.
Out comes the second person pronoun.
Methinks she doth protest too much.
from the micro to the macro
A mangy mule egotistically considers itself to be representative of a herd of wild mustangs.
There’s only ONE woman being referred to, not ALL women.
Some people just can’t seem to learn to take things personally.
I hear the sound of braying in the distance. Perhaps some poor lonely critter don’t know where the trough is situated.
Please don’t equate yourself with any literary personage…you certainly are not on that level, maybe you could dust the shelves. That is probably not a good idea either as you might tend to misinterrupt, misunderstand, misquote and most of all, miss the point. Only a jackass would know the sound of braying… hmmm and your vocabulary has gone into the gutter lately … shouldn’t that “don’t” be “doesn’t” and shouldn’t that sentence end with a question mark ? Tsk Tsk….should run that by that school marm of yours.
It is always interesting that the semi-literate and unpublished seem to believe themselves to be literary critics, and are so inept that they cannot recognize deliberate slumming to reach the slanderers of this world. Oh and note that I have not personalized my comments, keeping them clean of the personal pronoun YOU. Unfortunately this blog is infected by a tiny minority who seem to have an inner need to say the last word, and to do so with the verbal wit of a political policy statement of an incumbant party.
You’re all idiots………..(guess I got the last word, hahahahahahaha)