Our Healthcare System: Have you had enough yet?

BY STEVEN KASZAB

Our healthcare system has failed many of us it’s true. Sure, there are excuses like: the pandemic, shortage of staff, insufficient equipment, lack of skilled specialists (radiologists etc). Many have died waiting for needed operations and procedures. Those skilled specialists are so busy that often they do not have the time to see patients, make their observations and suggest treatments.

Politicians tell us to be patient, understanding and try to live our lives the best way we can. Their claims that we are seeing the system improve over time are ridiculous, a lie and propaganda of the worst type. Politicians go to special clinics and hospitals to receive health care, with no waiting list applied. You think Premier Ford has to wait, or any MPP, or MP in our nation? They receive preferred customer service, private rooms and 3-5 medical staff to care for them. No shortages for those who manage our health system, no sir.

I may seem angry, and truthfully, I am. The people in my life who are ill are experiencing outlandish and unimaginable lack of service from their healthcare providers. A brother-in-law (Kevin) whose legs have changed colour, swelled to twice the normal size, and drove him insane with pain finally had the chance to see the doctor who finally realized how bad the condition was, and Kevin still is not allowed to go to the hospital.

Family doctors, trauma centres, professionals and hospitals were at odds while he sat and screamed in pain. An elderly mother who after years of testing and medical assistance is told the operation they knew she needed to make her life better, cannot be done. She was waiting for advice for years and finally is told she is S.O.L.

A good friend of mine, a drug addict, cannot get any assistance, because he lives on a far-off reservation with very limited medical staff.

These are the excuses from those who have managed our healthcare system for decades. I am not talking about medication – pain killers, because they already supplied that to many of us years ago, creating the opioid crisis we have been facing for at least a decade, planned and carried out by your well-meaning medical professionals along with Big Pharma.

Mass addiction on a scale that could only have been planned, or perhaps our medical support managers are idiots, not realizing the potency of these drugs and their effects.

Who answers for this mess? This ongoing suffering your neighbour is going through. When our family and neighbours pass away will those responsible come to their funerals, send us a card with their best wishes? Hell no, because they don’t know or care about us.  I know of people who have attempted taking their lives more than once because pain fills their lives, and the only answer given them from the health professionals is more drugs/painkillers. All the while the world is critical of Canada’s proliferation towards euthanasia and self-death. Many Canadians are considering their own demise by their own hands.

Years ago, our political leaders envisioned a universal healthcare system that would benefit us all. Well, there have been many complications. We live in an economic system and are treated by medical professionals that adhere to Capitalistic tendencies. Every political administration that has acquired power has limited our universal healthcare system, built speed bumps that curtail spending and investment in what could have been a system envied by the rest of the world.

Liberal, Conservative and even New Democrats took from the healthcare system and shifted monies elsewhere, to places more politically popular. In Ontario, the Ford Conservatives are introducing different forms of private healthcare, knowing that once contracted, these revenue making centres will become permanent, and spread north-westward throughout the province. Many provinces are already doing so.

Our healthcare system is tied to how our economy grows or shrinks. A recession is on the way, so we are told. What will happen to our hospital’s budgets once hard times hit us? Yah! Something to ponder.