The Dick Morris Canadian Healthcare Deception!!!

Okay Dick Morris, you've successfully ignited a fire in my belly with your ill informed and biased attack on the Canadian Health Care System. One would assume that a requirement for a political strategist would be to seek out the truth before authoring a strategy, but I guess sometimes the truth takes a backseat to ensuring that your rich friends can continue to jump queu, and get services that are out of reach for John Q. Public who works part-time at McDonald's for minimum wage.

Yes, there are flaws in the Canadian Health Care System but those flaws are very much similar to those in the American System, too much bureaucracy and putting money ahead of patients. To blame workers and their unions for Canada's Health Care woes, demonstrates your ignorance and lack of research.

In my home province of Ontario, (that's Canada's largest and most populated province, in case you haven't researched that either), there is a Provincial Ministry of health which is well staffed, albeit not adequately funded, made obvious by the fact that health care institutions have received little, if any, budget increase in years. In days of old, when health care was at least semi-well managed, this Ministry administered budgets and policies for health care institutions.

Bureaucracy being contagious within government circles, it was no longer "rational" for the Ministry created to oversee medical services in the province to continue overseeing health care providers. Along comes a new level of bureaucracy, complete with highly paid bureaucrats who will be charged with administering budgets, overseeing and integrating health care services across the province. The province was divided into 14 LHINs, (Local Health Integration Networks). These LHINs would now be accountable to the Ministry of Health, and health care facilities would now be accountable to the LHINs. Ironically, Local does not have the same meaning in government speak as it has in Webster's dictionary, because the Local Health Integration Network my community belongs to covers an area which is comparable to the size of Texas give or take a few miles.

Government bureaucracy out of the way, I now direct your attention to the health care facilities themselves. My community has a 58 bed acute care Hospital which is administered by a Chief Executive Officer, 5 senior managers or directors and 7 managers to oversee roughly 200 staff.
Under government and LHINs regulations, the hospital can not run a deficit, and the CEO is required to sign an Accountability Agreement which makes that stipulation clear. There is no accounting for the fact that costs are significantly higher each year, budget increases are minimal therefore how can a hospital avoid a potential deficit. The only options are to cut services and/or staff and despite being top heavy in management the cuts are always made in the front line.

Now, Mr. Morris, please tell me how you can make the distinction that the Unions control health care and that they are responsible for the problems it faces. Contrary to your statement the Unions would never stand in the way of service delivery. Given the large amount of part-time workers, unions would welcome the opportunity for their members to get extra hours through night-time procedures and services. If those services aren't available, blame the government, blame the bureaucracy or blame top heavy management but in no way can you blame the workers and their unions who ensure that they make a living wage in a healthy and safe environment. Even the lowest paid manager has a much higher salary, and better benefits than the highest paid worker so look up the ladder if you are looking for the cause.

Public and accessible health care should be a fundamental right in any civilized nation that cares about it's people. How many Americans are bankrupt or homeless because of an extended hospital stay or overly inflated, make the providers rich cost of a procedure? How many Americans die needlessly because they can't afford insurance or health care services? How many much needed services are denied by American HMOs each year based solely on costs. Compare those figures to the same figures in Canada and you will notice that even with all it's flaws, Canada's Health care System is second to none. Clean-up your own back-yard, Mr Morris, before you tell me to clean mine.