Another surgery cancellation in McGuinty's health care monopoly: who cares?

Jonathan Jenkins wrote (St.Catharines Standard, Nov.13, 2009) of Crohn's disease patient Tina Peek, 51, whose surgery was cancelled unexpectedly at Sunnybrook hospital. Ms. Peek "had driven in from her Barrie home with her husband on Tuesday morning, bracing herself for an operation to fix a hernia and move her iliostomy from one side of her stomach to the other.

It's just the latest in a litany of procedures she's faced over the past two years and she says she had to psych herself up for the potential five-day hospital stay. To prepare, she washed for several days with anti-bacterial soap and stopped eating Sunday.

But after a three-hour wait, including a painful 45-minute effort to get an IV into her weary veins, Peek was told her surgery was cancelled because Sunnybrook had no bed for her.

Peek decided to take her complaint to the top. After confronting the secretary, she was introduced to a patient relations consultant whose office was nearby.

"I pulled my pants down for her too. I've never done that before in my life," Peek said.

"I was pretty hysterical. I still had the IV in my hand.

"My husband had left to go back home. I have no phone, I have no money, I have nothing. I have a hospital card and a health card because they tell you not to bring anything. She gave me a parking voucher good for one time and a $20 food voucher."

Peek has been given a new surgery date of Dec. 16.

Craig Duhamel, Sunnybrook vice-president for patient relations, said the hospital regrets having to cancel Peek's date -- one of four that were put off that day -- but simply couldn't accommodate any more patients."

Let's remember that during the 2007 election campaign (at an all-candidates meeting at Ridley College) St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley brought up Sunnybrook as he bragged about how well McGuinty's Liberals were doing in health care.

So let's ask Jim Bradley now about what happened to Tina Peek at Sunnybrook.

You can bet Jimmy, our illustrious health-care monopolist, doesn't know, and furthermore, couldn't care less.

Bed shortage? What bed shortage? Bradley and his McGuinty-monopolist-ideologues have made it clear Liberals are not interested in providing more hospital beds: see here )

Wasn't Ms. Peek's situation predetermined and predictable, and directly linked to Dalton McGuinty's monopolist ideology?

Liberals will simply 'fob off' (to use Jim Bradley's phrase) Ms. Peek's entire experience as 'just an anomaly' !!!!

[see here, where I wrote:

"After five years of Liberal rule, the doctor shortage in Niagara remains virtually unchanged.

Peter Downs wrote in “Is there a doctor in the house”, (St. Catharines Standard, Feb.16, 2008) that “20,000 people in the city are searching for a doctor.”

20,000 out of a population in St. Catharines of what, about 130,000? Are these the kinds of numbers that St. Catharines' Liberal MPP Jim Bradley is proud of?

Wrote Downs: “St. Catharines is short approximately 20 family doctors, while the region as a whole is down about 95, according to Ministry of Health figures.”

Downs wrote of some doctors who are interviewing potential patients before taking them on, for a variety of reasons. No mention was made in the article as to MPP Jim Bradley’s views on this blow back to his Liberal government’s Commitment to the Future of Medicare Act. Bradley’s government has forced patients to only compensate their doctor through the government’s medicare-monopoly-middleman. Will Bradley’s Liberals now begin forcing doctors to accept any and all patients, too? Will the Liberals simply enact provisions forcing all doctors to become salaried state employees?" ]

So, who was the Liberal health minister in Feb. 2008, during which time the St.Catharines Standard's Mr.Downs was reporting the doctor shortage?? Why, yes - it was George Smitherman - who (in his Nov.2009 bid to run for mayor of Toronto) now trumpets his claim here that he "got doctors for 600,000 more Ontarians"!

Why isn't anyone investigating Smitherman's blatant spin? Why isn't the St.Catharines Standard examining what Smitherman now says he did, with what was actually being reported locally at the time?

In Feb. 2008, the Standard reported that 20,000 people in St.Catharines didn't have a doctor; that St.Catharines was short of 20 family doctors. Seeing that Smitherman (thank goodness) was shuffled out as health minister in June 2008, HOW MANY DOCTORS DID SMITHERMAN actually 'get' for St.Catharines?

Should we just take Smitherman's current claims as truth, and pretend Downs' account was never written?!

Is Smitherman taking credit for doctors that his Liberal government "got" only during his term as health minister (2003-Jun.2008), or is he referring to the sum total from 2003 to Nov.2009?

Has anyone asked local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley to specifically comment on the bed shortage AND doctor shortage numbers (both locally in Niagara and Ontario-wide) during Smitherman's time as health minister?

Like all McGuinty Liberals, Jim Bradley is more concerned with propagating the ideological health of his failing single-payer health-care monopoly, than he is about the health of suffering patients who are held hostage within it.