Sunday, May 10, 2009

Police-state health-care in Liberal Ontario

Aina Flack wrote in "Hospital opponents won't be intimidated into silence", (St. Catharines Standard, May 8, 2009):

"Why such a heavy police presence at the hospital groundbreaking ceremony on April 28? Police officers outnumbered peaceful protesters, and they even had two police horses. Isn't this overkill? Protesters were by far all seniors. Doesn't the Region and the Niagara Health System recognize and value the fact that we have a right to protest health cuts, restructuring, the net loss of health services across Niagara and the folly of spending $749 million of taxpayers' money on the new hospital, especially since it is a P3 (public-private partnership)?
Protests, public debate and calls for transparency are what keep democracy alive in Canada. There are serious flaws in the current restructuring that will adversely affect citizens across Niagara now and into the future. We will not be intimidated into silence. "
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Who is intimidating these opponents? The region?!!
What is it with people blaming the NHS (Niagara Health System), or the LHIN, or the P3 finance model?
Why aren't they mentioning the Ontario Liberal Party's health-care lies and broken, duplicitous promises?
Where is the mention of Dalton McGuinty's or Jim Bradley's, or George Smitherman's or Kim Craitor's role in regards to the new hospital?
Why aren't they protesting the McGuinty Liberal's ideological, oppressive, police-state-like policies, which promote lack of choice and ban competition in Ontario's Liberal-run monopoly health care system?
Many whining local Liberals can't seem to fathom that their own Liberal Party's fascist health care regime has conspired against them. They never imagined in their wildest Liberal medicare nirvana wet dreams that they themselves would fall victim to their own unaccountable Liberal demagogic nightmare. Talk about being hoisted by your own petard.
The whining "opposition" seems to be concerned only about the location of the new hospital - not about the stark fact that McGuinty's Liberal health care monopoly simply steamrolled over the illusory health care rights of the citizen taxpayers of south Niagara! There is no choice in the Liberal health monopoly for patients. McGuinty's Liberals doubtlessly calculated that the concerns of south Niagarans were expendable.
And, once again, no one is discussing what the problem is (state-run monopolist health-care); they're just arguing about where the hospital should be!
The solution for the so-called "opposition" is what - to build the new hospital in Thorold, instead of St. Catharines? That's it, problem solved?! Seriously?

The NHS and the LHIN are marching on the direct Liberal orders of Dalton McGuinty and David Caplan. Put the blame where it legitimately belongs - on Liberal statists who practise Liberal Healthcare Duplicity!

It is indicative of the siege mentality of this McGuinty Liberal government and its 'police-state' health-system that a rather banal (to all but media-hungry politicians) occasion of a hospital-construction-site unveiling would have called for such high obvious (and needless) police presence. Overkill, indeed - as is the Liberal's ideological monopoly-stranglehold on health care itself.

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Frank Healy wrote in "Province must properly fund health care", (St. Catharines Standard, May 8, 2009):

"I can appreciate people's excitement about the new hospital for St. Catharines. However, I think some may be a little naive.
The new hospital is not everything we are given to believe. Of the 375 beds in the hospital, not all are slated for St. Catharines; in fact there will be fewer than the number of beds we currently have at the General. Other beds are slated for the rest of the region - if people can make it there before passing away from a heart attack or giving birth!
The original budget for the hospital was $300 million; it is now a staggering $759 million. How are we going to pay for this? What services in Niagara will be cut to finance the hospital? With emergency rooms in Fort Erie and Port Colborne being scaled back to urgent care centres, already long wait times in St. Catharines will become even longer, endangering lives.
Premier Dalton McGuinty currently funds Ontario hospitals below the rate of inflation, pushing 50 per cent of Ontario hospitals into deficit and forcing them to cut services. This must stop! Ontario health care must be properly funded. And we must be given the full truth about cuts and costs."
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The actual cost of the Liberal's new St. Catharines hospital, amortized and paid for by taxpayers over some 30 years, is going to be over $1.5 billion !!
Healy brings up some good questions, mentioning waiting lists, health care finance cuts, forced service cuts, underfunding, and hospital deficits in the Liberal's state-run health monopoly, which could very well endanger lives.
Will Liberal MPP Jim Bradley bother to publicly respond to Flack's earlier or Healy's above concerns?

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