Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Don't suppress or diminish Liberal health-care failures in Ontario

Unlike writer Richard Murri in his Feb.15 Niagara This Week letter, I commend columnist Mike Williscraft’s attempt (Feb.1, 2008) to bring Ontario’s failing health-care system to the discussion forefront, because it sure wasn’t debated during Ontario's recent provincial election.

We need more discussion, not less; we need to realize that these instances of the health-system failing patients are systemic, not dismissively anecdotal and unimportant. How many anecdotes do we need to hear? There is even a constitutional health-care challenge now before the Ontario court!

Where do HMO’s exist in Ontario? It would be great to have that choice. What are the names of these "certain politicians" who Dick Murri claims “would love to grab a slice of the health care funding pie” (whatever that means)? In the last five years, for example, I have heard no Ontario politician or party having the guts to openly challenge our failing health-care monopoly.

The only politicians grabbing Ontario’s entire health-care-monopoly funding pie are Dalton McGuinty's Liberals, who, while blaming others, have themselves created a two-tier system by delisting health-coverage while concurrently creating a new multi-billion-dollar Health Tax. Doesn't Dick realize this?! (of course he does..!)

Let’s not forget that when McGuinty's first-term Liberal Finance Minister Greg Sorbara stood in the Legislature of Ontario on May 18, 2004 to introduce his hated Health Tax, Sorbara noted in his budget speech that:
"For the past five years, health care budgets in Ontario have grown by an average of 8% per year."
That's right: McGuinty's Liberals actually complained that for five years the Conservatives spent too much on health-care, and so the Liberals were now going to "control" that!
To “improve” health-care, Sorbara said, his Liberal single-payer-monopoly-pushing demagogues were going to “to delist” previously-covered "universal" health-care!
McGuinty and his Ontario Liberals cut health care from their very first days in office - then continued to spread the narrative that "harris" was to blame!

We need to know that the health-care climate in Ontario is not all settled.
We need to reduce the politicians' health-care-policy footprint which restricts our individual health-care choices.
We need to see that the Liberal’s Commitment To The Future of Medicare Act is a policy failure.
We need to understand that 'universal health-care' is not the same as 'government monopoly health-care'.
And - despite what the duplicitous Dicks say - we should also acknowledge and give a note of thanks to the maligned American system which is treating so many Ontarians who have been let down by McGuinty's monopolist Liberals.
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