By Pepper Parr
January 16th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
Marit Stiles will be confirmed as the leader of the NDP on February 4th after being acclaimed as the Leader of the Party earlier in the year.
Well that didn’t take very long; before media could tell the full story about what the provincial government is putting forward in the way of private clinic services, the NDP was out with a statement that was the equivalent of “Not so fast Big Fella”: saying
“This was Doug Ford’s plan all along. He has spent years starving our health care system of resources, demoralizing health care workers with his wage-capping Bill 124 and leaving Ontarians desperate for care and frustrated by his games.
“We want to be clear – he will not get away with this. People will end up paying out of pocket and face longer wait times in our hospitals, as his plan drives healthcare workers from our public system. At every turn, he proves that he doesn’t care about ordinary Ontarians – just making profits for his donors and friends.
“The Ontario NDP will use every tool available to protect our publicly funded healthcare system. We want to live in a province where everyone has access to affordable mental and physical health care. We want Ontario to be a province for everyone to live, work, and feel supported by a system that works for them, not against them. We want to work together for a province we’re proud of.”
I don’t really need to feel proud of the province – but I would like to get my cataracts problem taken care of. The outfit I was sent to has asked for $500 for each eye to do a really accurate measure of what I will need once things get to the surgery point.
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Unfortunately what the NDP would like to see in the way of Universal Health care in Ontario is not possible. It is easy to say what needs to be done by a political party that is not in power.
People have been on waiting lists to get diagnostic testing, surgery, etc. for years. There is enough blame to go around for past governments along with the present one.
For a period of time the past liberal government indicated that they had shortened the wait times for patients to get knee and hip replacement surgery. How did they accomplish this ?-The waitlist to get the surgery was shortened, because the waitlist was switched to getting to see the surgeon. Once you were able to see the surgeon, the wait time to get into the hospital was shortened.
There is no easy answer in improving better access to healthcare. We don’t have enough longterm care facilities, or enough government provided in home services to keep patients out of hospitals. These problems have been years in the making.
Covid 19 simply exacerbated a failing healthcare system.
The plan being proposed by the Ontario government is like trying to put a band-aid on an oozing sore.