There's something really sad about a wheelchair-bound politician flat-out lying about what his party is doing to provide health care for his constituents:
Getting Things Done: Patient Wait Times Guarantee
Today, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Health Minister Tony Clement announced that Canada’s New Government has completed Patient Wait Times Guarantee agreements with all provinces and territories.
Sadly, the reality doesn't quite live up to the hype, does it?
(H/T: LC)
WHO EXACTLY IS RESPONSIBLE HERE? After re-watching that video footage of Captain Charisma, I'm a bit confused as to who is making the promise of the wait times "guarantee".
Is this an achievement of Stephen Harper and the Harperettes? They're certainly taking the credit, but the text advertises "completed Patient Wait Times Guarantee agreements with all provinces and territories." So it's not a "guarantee"; rather, it's an "agreement." But what does that mean?
If someone can't get medical treatment within the advertised "guaranteed" wait time, can someone be sued? If so, who? I'm guessing the Cons won't have anything to do with that; they'll simply point out that they delivered the money, and it's up to the provinces to deliver the goods.
And Harper's carefully chosen verbiage doesn't really clarify anything. He claims that his party will cut wait times "guaranteed," but that certainly doesn't seem to imply that the wait times themselves will have a guaranteed maximum, only that they'll be shorter in some way. And he goes on to claim that patients in some provinces will soon obtain "more timely radiation treatment." Well, that's great and everything, but "more timely" doesn't equate to "guaranteed," does it?
The more you read this, the more you see a dog-and-pony show. I guess it's time to read the text, unless someone wants to link to one of our fine progressive blogging colleagues who has already done all the legwork.
5 comments:
Interesting. I thought the wait times were seeing specialists for diagnoses and orthopedic surgeons. I also thought there was a shortage of anesthetists. This is purely anecdotal, but no one I've EVER heard of has had to wait 8 weeks for cancer treatment (and several people I know hve had cancer in the past few years). In fact they were all treated within a week of diagnosis or just a little more.
What people I know have had to wait for, is seeing the specialist-for example, three months to see a gynecologist after an ultrasound revealed growths on the ovaries. THATs scary.
But hey, they can claim its an election promise they've kept, just like the rest of their do nothing policies.
I don't think you understand the law of damages.
If you sue, because the guarantee wasn't honored, the law of damages gives you the right to recover the value of the service that you paid for but wasn't provided.
Since you don't pay for medical care, you haven't suffered damages. So, the most you can actually get, is a court order to the province to give you the treatment. Like that is going to get you anywhere.
Who says you don't pay for health care? What the hell do you think taxes are, dumb-ass?
I understand the seer's point. My point was -- what recourse do I have, as a Canadian who has been "guaranteed" a limit on wait times, if that "guarantee" is not upheld?
What is the point of announcing a "guarantee" that has no value?
This is precisely why I find Harper so dishonest; this all looks much more like a part of the hidden agenda to discredit pubic health care rather than actually about doing something substantial about a particular problem of health care delivery.
If you have no recourse, then the guarantee becomes meaningless and once again, our awful, awful system fails.
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