Reading between the lines
In his stirring defence of the new plans to cut hospital services here, the Chief of Medical Staff, Dr. David Broderick, makes many points. The main one being is that in order to protect the hospital it must cut services to save costs.
By making self-preservation the main ideal the Doctors' Chief is only protecting the status quo of having Doctors maintain their juicy investment in the system. He repeats the mantra: "Health care, already consuming approximately 46 per cent of current government spending, could balloon to 70% in the next 15 years." Perhaps if Doctor's pay was controlled, and they as a group have received far more of the health pie than any other group, health costs wouldn't rise so much. Hospital share of the pie has gone down over the last few years so why would the Doctors blame them for the cumulative increase?
So folks the fight is still on. Mr Biron will defend his moves on Monday evening and the rest of us will stand amazed that he could be following orders so well. The fight here is not with Biron and the Board but with the Central government, and to that end the first phase of our local message will take place tomorrow when a petition containing nearly 5,000 names - surely a local record and one that is easily twice as big as the last local petition, will be handed over to Queen's Park. The fight continues!
By making self-preservation the main ideal the Doctors' Chief is only protecting the status quo of having Doctors maintain their juicy investment in the system. He repeats the mantra: "Health care, already consuming approximately 46 per cent of current government spending, could balloon to 70% in the next 15 years." Perhaps if Doctor's pay was controlled, and they as a group have received far more of the health pie than any other group, health costs wouldn't rise so much. Hospital share of the pie has gone down over the last few years so why would the Doctors blame them for the cumulative increase?
So folks the fight is still on. Mr Biron will defend his moves on Monday evening and the rest of us will stand amazed that he could be following orders so well. The fight here is not with Biron and the Board but with the Central government, and to that end the first phase of our local message will take place tomorrow when a petition containing nearly 5,000 names - surely a local record and one that is easily twice as big as the last local petition, will be handed over to Queen's Park. The fight continues!
5 comments:
"We had to destroy the village in order to save it." USAmerican officer in Vietnam
One of the things that I found surprising and discouraging was when Biron said that his plans were approved "unanimously" by the NHH board.
Is there not a single board member who is concerned about removal of patient care from those who need it? Why would all the board fall in line behind a bean counter?
It is my understanding that the Ontario Health Coalition is allowing the Tory leader Tim Hudak read the petition into the record at Queens Park. Has the OHC thrown in the towel and just given up? What other reason would there be to allow the Conservatives to get any where near the petition never mind read the damn thing. Do they not know that the Tories are much closer to the problem than they are to the solution? Do they think the Tories are on their side? It now seems to me like a big waste of time getting those petitions signed!
Greg, if you go back to a post dated Monday, March 15th from me, you can read my theory of why the entire board of the hospital would vote in favour of the cuts championed by Mr. Biron.
Not a lot of people made comments at the time, but I still stand by my theory regardless.
Deb:
Yes I agree with your post. But if there are 18 board members I had not thought possible that all of them would be there for the purpose of furthering their own pseudo-political careers. I had assumed that some of them would be there to represent the public interest. I find it deplorable that such a large proportion of people believe personal concerns out way public interest, I guess I really am naive.
But I can know see I might be wrong as people who represent the public interest rather than "the organization" would probably be suspect as trouble makers and not encouraged to join the board. It all makes it more necessary to get some non-organization people on the board. The rumour mill suggests that Tony Farren and Bill Patchett are interested, so they deserve all the help the can get.
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