Niagara newspaper asks questions about cross-border health care

above: this interesting notice appeared in Niagara This Week, Nov.13, 2009:

"Tell us your story.

Have you or a loved one travelled to the United States for medical treatment, an MRI or any other medical reasons? Was it because of long Ontario wait lists?

Or because you could not get the type of care needed here? Did OHIP pay? Or did you have to pay yourself? Tell us your story. We want to hear about it. email: mwilliscraft@niagarathisweek.com"

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Now that is a notice that you won't find posted in St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's or in Niagara Falls Liberal MPP Kim Craitor's offices! Damn press startin' to ask questions and cause trouble.

What a great initiative by Niagara This Week - it is about time the local press began asking questions along these lines. (I suppose you have to wonder what's going on, when American health providers are advertising in local Niagara newspapers: see here; here; here; here)

Let's see how 'open', 'transparent' and 'candid' Bradley and Craitor will be (that is, if they're asked, and if they even bother, to respond!) Let's hear Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty's response, and that of current health minister Deb Matthews. Niagara This Week should also request interviews from former health ministers David Caplan, and George Smitherman. Let readers know which Liberals refuse to comment.

How many Ontarians have gone to the States for health care, Dalton? Does any Liberal know? Does OHIP know? How much has OHIP paid out to Ontario citizens in out-of-country health costs, and why? How many Americans get "free" health care in Ontario? How many fraudulent OHIP cards are still in circulation in McGuinty's monopoly, since 2003? How much health care fraud is there in McGuinty's OHIP monopoly? Why are Ontario patients often sent over the border to U.S. hospitals as a first response? (see here; here; here; here) Why doesn't the Ontario coroner's office investigate the circumstances of every Ontario patient who dies (see here) after being sent to the States for health care which coudn't be provided in Ontario? There would be case file of precedents for the press to behold.

My post Liberal Healthcare Duplicity details many Ontarians who have suffered in McGuinty's ideological health monopoly since 2003 - see here for the sorrowful tale.

Smitherman didn't even know who Suzanne Aucoin was, when his Liberals denied her cancer treatment here in Ontario. Jim Bradley pretended that somehow it wasn't his Liberal government that did this to Aucoin. NTW should ask Smitherman about Aucoin's mis-treatment by McGuinty's health monopoly, keeping in mind ombudsman Andre Marin's scathing indictment of what McGuinty's ideological government-monopoly did.

While they're at it, NTW could ask any McGuintyite to explain away their complicity in Shona Holmes' health care horror. NTW could try to get that great Ontario Liberal, Belinda Stronach, to chat about where she went to obtain part of her cancer treatment. NTW could look up the dozens upon dozens of Ontario patients which reporter Lisa Priest wrote about over the last five-six years, who had to leave Canada for health care in the States, for various reasons.

[Just for a quick reminder of the Incompetent McGuinty Liberal Government's's long-arc of health care disaster in Ontario, read one of Priest's many articles "Patients wait as PET scans used in animal experiments" (Globe and Mail, Nov.23, 2006) - see here. Be sure to read the comments!

Who will be asking Toronto mayoral aspirant George Smitherman, Ontario's incompetent health minister in 2006, about the issues Priest wrote of three years ago - issues which are still relevant and still unresolved in McGuinty's health-monopoly today???]

NTW could also investigate what is going on (see here) at the Ontario Health Services and Appeal Review Board, HSARB - this is another hornet's nest of government health care bureaucracy that could become a series.