Video: The Most Interesting Health Care Consultant

14 posts / 0 new

Tue, 2009-09-15 08:34

Tigana

There's a great new video in the front page of Rabble today - and I hope to see lots more like it. Yanks would be better off with a healthier system.

http://www.rabble.ca/multimedia/2009/09/most-interesting-health-care-con...

Here's a snapshot of health care in Ontario.

The budget for Ontario's Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care has been increasing every year.

http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/english/budget/ontariobudgets/2005/images/paper...

Now it is at $40 Billion. Only about one-third of that money goes to actual patient care.

$40 billion is the entire fortune of Bill Gates - or the combined personal fortune of Canada's top 15 Forbes billionaires. To see how much money this is, look at the L CURVE - http://www.lcurve.org/

In some communities in Ontario 40% of people do not have a physician and make do with walk-in clinics. Ontario's Doctor Connect is a sham - they have only the same list of doctors you can get from online searches, but make their service sound official and efficient by asking for your OHIP number and medical conditions before they will help you. That's coercion and a violation of privacy. How many people can they actually help if there are only 20 doctors - and maybe not the pick of the litter - for a city of half a million where 150,000 need physicians?

One in every six of us is disabled or senior or both, yet until recently the Ontario government had no real Seniors Secretariat and directed seniors' calls to the phone labyrinth of Service Ontario. There are now funds for "healthy aging at home" - which will pay for community care workers and social workers, but not for good food or to have the snow removed. Community care workers are angels but may not stand on a stool to change a light bulb - so Granny may try herself, and die with a broken hip in the dark. And don't even try to get volunteer help for seniors or disabled persons in Ontario - United Way has none and Mike Harris killed off all the little charities. I won't even get started on Ontario's e-health scandal...

We need to rein in our own system and practitioners:

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2009/08/28/HealthcareAdvice/?utm_source=monday...

The new NDP head says McGuinty is wrong to close hospitals, but with $40B Ontario should be able to have good health and its own space program.

Where is OUR health care? That's the $40 Billion dollar question.

Wed, 2009-09-16 10:40

Tigana

Forensic analysis of this document would be welcome.

http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/english/budget/estimates/2009-10/volume1/mohltc...

It's your money...

Mon, 2009-09-21 05:07

Tigana

Harper's minister for seniors in Ottawa was once in MADD.

http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/bio.asp?id=56

MADD scandal: http://www.nupge.ca/news_2007/n04ja07a.htm

"Toronto Star report says 81% of (MADD) donations go to fund-raisers and administration; 19% ends up in programs to fight drunk driving"

Correction - not Doctor Connect but Health Care Connect

http://www.news.ontario.ca/mohltc/en/2009/07/800000-more-ontarians-find-...

Link - Aging at Home

http://www.health.gov.on.ca/english/public/program/ltc/33_ontario_strate...

Mon, 2009-09-21 08:31

Tommy_Paine

I just heard a story I read about in the London Free Press on the weekend, break on CBC radio. Untendered I.T. contracts to friends, totalling 3 million over a couple of years.

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Here's the nutty part I must, once again, engage in. Ontario politics have been dominated all the way back to the first legislature by what is more than fair to call "Family Compact" politics. While sometimes today I suppose it's like it was back in the late 1700's and well into the 1800's-- direct family members of politicians skimming from the public trough, more often it's a class thing. If you're a professional, work for the right party for years, you wind up with a job in, oh, let's say E-Health, or OLG or Ontario Hydro, where you can send government revenue to your former bosses, colleagues, and former members of the Premiers Office, etc.

The practice is more often than not not even illegal. Not surprising when it's the thieves making the laws.

Our legislature hardly even sits anymore. In order for that to work, more and more financial autonomy had to be granted to buerocrats, and of course, purposefully, there's less and less oversight.

I am willing to bet we only see the tip of the iceberg from time to time.

I think it's high time this kind of legalized corruption was made illegal. And, I'd bring back the sentence of hard labour for those found guilty of government corruption.

Mon, 2009-09-21 15:01

Tigana

Tommy Paine sagely wrote,

"I think it's high time this kind of legalized corruption was made illegal. And, I'd bring back the sentence of hard labour for those found guilty of government corruption."

Thanks, Tommy - maybe this is the story you saw?

http://news.sympatico.cbc.ca/Home/ContentPosting?newsitemid=ehealth-comm...

These reports - on the front page of Rabble today - indicates that poverty in Canada is so bad that even business is starting to take notice, and poverty leads to malnutrtion, ill health, mental disorders, and early mortality.

http://www.bcgeu.ca/Canadian_poverty_rates_so_bad

http://www.nupge.ca/node/2572 (updated)

Fortunately, we can change this.

We MUST change this.

Wed, 2009-09-23 08:41

ennir

Thanks for this Tigana, it is an issue that needs to be addressed, the question is how to address it?

For me, I do not see it changing except for the worse, it seems to me that the systems we have created to provide help have morphed into bureaucracies that work only to sustain themselves. I have given up on all of them.

I think we have to create smaller circles of support, support that is not dependent on government funding or approval.

Wed, 2009-09-23 12:32

Tigana

Thanks, Ennir - we mice have to get rid of the cats, as Tommy Douglas told us, and return to small circles of support as you say.

Maybe this resouce from the front page of Rabble will help us to do that.

http://www.cpj.ca/en/blog/rebekah/fighting-poverty-rural-communities-too...

http://www.endabusenow.ca/node/145

Wed, 2009-09-30 08:34

Tommy_Paine

Just an update on one of the stories linked to in this thread:

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Local/2009/09/30/11200316-sun.html

"The vice-president at the centre of the London hospitals' electronic health scandal is leaving her job Friday -- with a $451,000 severance package immediately defended by her boss."

Wed, 2009-09-30 09:47

ennir

So, minimal to no services for seniors in their homes but half million dollar severance packages for individuals such as the one above, there is something very fucked up about this. Unfortunately, I think the sad reality is that all of our government departments have been corrupted, gutted of any meaningful function, and filled with individuals content to collect salaries for maintaining the fiction.

Wed, 2009-09-30 10:16

#10

Tommy_Paine

Oh, and you know, the best part is that no law was broken, anywhere.

Wed, 2009-09-30 19:14

#11

Sineed

Tommy_Paine wrote:

"The vice-president at the centre of the London hospitals' electronic health scandal is leaving her job Friday -- with a $451,000 severance package immediately defended by her boss."

The 1st thought that goes through my head when I see a story like this is, how do you get gigs like that? Not that I'm looking to pull down a huge salary by scamming the public sector *cough cough*, but everybody I know works for a living.

I work for the Ontario Government, and every time we get audited, I get hassled for tiny P-card purchases, like new drug reference books to replace the 20-year-old ones the nurses have been using. The auditors also told my boss I shouldn't have bought a $99 dollar kneeling chair I picked up at Staples to deal with my back problems aggravated by the chair I used to use when mixing the methadone. I had been authorized to buy a similar chair that was $400. This one works for me; however, I was not authorized to buy this particular chair.

And then the same employer hands out hundreds of thousands of dollars to people who do sweet bugger all; people who shop at those stores on Bloor St that I can't afford to window-shop at; people who expense their daily Starbucks lattes.

When I get home from work, my back hurts and my feet hurt. I've been working for a living going on 25 years now, and I would like one of these jobs where you get well into the 6 figures for being incompetent.

Guess, though, I'm not qualified to do one of those jobs, because I have skills.

Wed, 2009-09-30 19:29

#12

Tommy_Paine

No, Sineed, it's not a skill issue.

The burden of a conscience denies you these opportunities.

Anyway, there are more serious revelations of corruption in health care leaked today, I thought they deserved a thread on their own.

Thu, 2009-10-08 22:22

#13

pet_1968

Thank you Tigana, I read all of your links and found them to be informative. I only want to add this thought, keeping in mind the reports from the Ombudsman office claiming that the Ontario gov't is more concerned with appearing to deliver services, than actually delivering them.

I just want to add a little food for thought: Is is possible that gov't govern on behalf of its' own interests?

Sun, 2009-10-11 12:53

#14

Tigana

Thank you, Pet. The government isn't working for us, that's for sure. We must change that.