"Canadian values"

Ideological idiocy impedes improving health care in Ontario:

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman said the government will not consider contracting out knee-replacement operations to a private Toronto hospital.

The Globe and Mail revealed yesterday [March 15] that the province was reviewing a proposal from Don Mills Surgical Unit Ltd., a private Toronto hospital, to perform 1,500 knee-replacement operations.

[...]

"This Ministry of Health gives you and all Ontarians the complete assurance, I will never support the outsourcing of those knee surgeries to any private, for-profit-motivated organization," Mr. Smitherman said. "Our government fundamentally believes that the public health-care system, the not-for-profit public health-care system is the best expression of Canadian values [emphasis added]."..

Despite the fact that there would be a substantial cost saving, and that the province already funds some procedures at this hospital:

The Ontario government has rejected a proposal to have 1,500 knee replacements done at a private Toronto hospital, even though it would have helped reduce waiting times and cost $1,000 less per knee than in the public system.

[...]

Don Mills Surgical is one of three surgical hospitals that operate under the province's Private Hospitals Act...[and amongst other things does] provincially financed cataract and orthopedic services such as knee arthroscopy and cataract surgery...

As the Globe editorialized [full text not online]:

Canadians should not have to wait in terrible pain for surgery because political leaders won't talk honestly about private health care. But that is the situation in Ontario. People wait nearly twice as long as the Ontario government's official targets say they should. Yet Health Minister George Smitherman turned his nose up last week at a chance to pay a private clinic in Toronto to help cut waiting times for knee-replacement surgery...

Madness.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at March 23, 2007 07:20 AM