a community with no health care will die. leaving no witnesses to the rape and piledge of the land and its resources. This is a deliberate strategy to allow for unlimited resource developement .

Yes less operating rooms less beds more Administration from Health Authorities who only do the bidding of their political Masters. Listened to that humanitarian Christy Clark as a guest host on NW about the hospital to be built between Courtney and Campbell River at a net loss of service but cost more money against the wishes of the people. VIHA doesn't care.

It's not just the sick who are being abused by this government. They're currently promoting a foster parent type scheme for the disabled.

It seems to be something like this, though as usual it's difficult to get them to admit to the specifics in detail.

Unqualified and poorly trained people will be recruited to 'adopt' adults with developmental disabilities for money. Very little money at that. The Californian 'consultant' they're trotting around to promote this says $9 to $11 an hour.

For this pittance they will be expected to provide room and board and all services, including policing their own behaviour, since the social workers were pulled out of service a few months ago.

So the clients, once placed in this way, will be 100% in the hands of these service providers. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without the option.

If they aren't able to operate a telephone, which most are not, they won't even be able to call a cop.

Sounds like a Liberal plan to me. All these refusals to provide public services by these conservative governments are of a single pattern. The people properly pay their taxes to pay for these things, then the government raises their own pay, reduces their own workload, and keeps the money.

Or gives it in great whacks to their 'contributors' to build things we already built.

Who pays for these trips to hospitals and doctors? What pot of money does the airfare for patients care from small communities to urban centers? Why it comes out of the very budget that the Liberals claim is unsustainable! What a Shock to realize that this is yet another ploy to increase the financial pressure on the health budget and make it appear unsustainable. What is the cost comparion between flying in a doctor to see a hundred people verses flying a hundred people to the doctor? These con artist we have in Victoria are so arrogant they don't even attempt to cover up their poor reasoning for doing this. The only thing I can think is that the liberasl must have collectively had their consciences removed so they can pull this $hit on us and still sleep at night. Then again why worry about your actions when the AVERAGE CITIZEN JUST ALLOWS THEM TO GET AWAY WITH IT!!!! These guys and gals are poor excuses for human beings if you ask me.

Abbott talks a lot, waves his arms around a lot and it's always not true what others are saying. Next thing we will be hearing is that its the tax payers fault they live some were outside a local bus stop from the Vancouver General or get sick after 4 PM Mon. to Friday. A long time ago I was in the Canadian Military. It was fairly common to line up a bunch for certain tests. In came the doctor doing the tests. Everyone got the tests and he went back to somewhere else. Fast and efficient simply ain't words in the vocabulary of the Provincial Health experts. My God, I've been waiting for a very long time for a steroid injection here in the little town of Victoria. So silly me, I ask if nobody can get it done here, come up with a name in the lower mainland and somehow I'll get there. Blank expressions all round. We don't do things that way. What a strange way to fix peoples problems. Wait for them to go private seems to be the name of the game. So far no one has suggested going to some religious guy for a hands on cure

Don't forget the new motto of Health Canada as presented by our "new Government":
TIME HEALS ALL WOUNDS.

yep, some pretty bad schemes are developing, but remember the ministers in charge do not get a bonus, unless they can cut more costs!
They have no incentive to do the best job, only the one that can save money right now, and fuk the future!

Small towns in Ontario recruit GPs by offering to set up their practice, complete with offices and clerical/nursing staff paid for by the village. For those fresh out of med school, saddled with onerous student loans, it is often quite attractive.

Yup! It makes sense to get more people to travel just to save a few bucks on doctors visits. Not very green though. Just gobbles up the gas.

The VIHA announced today a 300 million dollar hospital, not in Campbell River or Comox but somewhere in between. They were a bit vague on how much money they will be putting intoteh old hopsitals in those two places. have to run it by Gordo first. wonder how many doctors will be travelling between the three places.. Hey maybe Gordo will give them bus passes

snert:

That's the "advantage" of many budgets....fuel for transportation naturally enough doesn't belong in healthcare. Yer fuel is integral to getting patioents to whare they must go....
Good point, snert!

PS If medical education is subsidized by government to the tune of some 80%, why aren't new doctors, et al, required to service in remote locations?

IRPbc has been used to offer an opportunity for students from various health professional programs, not just medical students, to find out what it is like to work in rural/remote B.C.
I'm not sure of the success rate in having them relocate to these remote locations, when they are through their training.
The mention by Kurt of how the small towns in Ontario attract GP's sounds like a good way to do it.
On the other hand if new doctors are forced in some way to serve in remote locations and absolutely hate it, there is no positive for the doctor or the people he ends up treating.

Bailey:
It's refreshing to hear someone standing up for the developementally disabled, a population that too often is forgotten. I have worked (as a public servant) with these folks for 24 years. It is an absolute shame how this government has treated them. The sad thing is that most people dont care. I could tell ya' some stories, but I digress from the story.

Thanks. It seems to be a pattern of abusive behaviour that just squats in the souls of these ideologues. It's a near certainty that you will be abused by them once you've shown them weakness.

The sick are abused because they are unable to defend themselves due to their illness, and the healthy can be lied to so they won't stand up for them.

The elders can be abused because they've already been discarded and who listens to old people?

The developmentally disabled can be abused because of the way others look away from them in embarrassed fear, and because they can't speak for themselves.

The damaged and mentally ill can be abused because they're bereft. No money, no homes, no voices, no power.

Everybody who safely can be abused by these cowardly Liberal bullies is abused by them. But they still keep the money we pay for the services we used to offer these groups, don't they?

If anybody can point to any powerless or even vulnerable group in our society who ISN'T being abused, I'd be interested to hear about it.

srfl:

But they don't hesitate to take the public money for their education...............
TANSTAAFL! (but of course, for some there is.....)

I think all post-secondary education recipients should expect to do some government service, if their education is being subsidized. If they don't want to meet this obligation (in lieu of massive student loans), then pay for an education entirely out of their own pockets, or find a patron, or win bursaries.........all that......

I was too busy in the past few weeks to read these stories, but they're nothing new.

One of the main efforts of the neocon ideology and neoclassical economic theory is the depopulation of the rural areas and jamming everybody into shoebox apartments in huge cities, where they have to rely on big business for every bite they eat and for every service. Then the land is given to the multinational mafia for total exploitation with skeleton crews.

This is called "free centerprise competitiveness".

Our school district #27, is losing about 300 students every year and we've lost the Cariboo-Chilcotin electoral district for the lack of voters.

This is no accident, but well executed plan and this medical mess is part of it.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

The history of Vancouver Island is rife with similar programmes of depopulation. I'd hazard that's true of the entire coast. Time and again people have been encouraged to homestead, or to move to small places where suddenly the government is helping fund some work. Used to be logging and sawmills. People would move, get settled in, start to carve a life for themselves and......one by one the services would be chopped until, inevitably, people had to move on looking for work...Ed's right, it isn't an accident. The temporary booms lasted as long as there was huge profit to be made from cutting old growth. When the cream began to run out so did the arstles.

The "crisis" has been manufactured, and this whole uproar from Mz Taylor and our esteemed divorced drunk is part of a plan to make things seem so bad we swallow the shite sandwich and they get to bring in yank-style province wide privatization of health care.

Look at the absolute mess that is our ambulance service! Towns without any coverage for days and weeks at a time. I don't believe a mess like that can happen without a concerted effort to force it to happen.

And while we're all worrying about whether or not we'll have a doctor on Tuesdays and Thursdays we might neglect to find the time to protest the huge "cost over run" of the Olympic cow cack.

If any of us were as slapdash and silly with our household budget as this pack of suits is with the provincial budget we'd be a province of people filing for bankruptcy. Which we very well might wind up being, anyway!

Great to read you Ed Deak!

Think maybe it was Joey who gave the impetus to this form of "progress" when he called for the closure of the outports in Newfoundland...........?