OPSEU Diablogue

Winners of this year’s Health Care Divisional Council are:

Fern Crawford, Local 497
Jackie Gibbons, Local 346
Adriana Thompson, Local 214

Come see us at the HCDC table to see about your prize.

Every Commission that has looked into health care delivery in Canada has recommended bringing prescription drugs under the Medicare umbrella. As modern health care has evolved, drug therapies have become increasingly important. If you can’t afford the drugs, you are effectively denied access to care. In many cases, patients who cannot afford their medications get sicker and cost the public system much more. Momentum is building for a public universal Pharmacare program in Canada. Coverage for all users would dramatically reduce overall costs, make access more equitable, and slow the rate of growth in drug spending. All that is missing is the political will. Learn more by taking our short (and somewhat fun) quiz.

For those attending the OPSEU Convention, you can fill out this quiz and enter it at the Health Care Divisional Council table by 2 pm. Three winners will be selected to win $100 in OPSEU clothing. Winners will be posted here shortly after 2 pm along with the answers.

1. Pharmacare is…
A) Care for farmers and their animals
B) A private health plan for Pharmacists and their assistants
C) Public health insurance for prescription drugs
D) The care criminal drug dealers have for their clients

2. The Ontario Drug Benefit (ODB) program is one of the most generous public drug benefit programs in Canada. You would be eligible for coverage if…
A) You are a senior over the age of 65
B) You live in a long term care home, home for
special care, are enrolled in a home care program or are on social assistance
C) The cost of your drugs is high relative to your
income
D) All of the above.

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The provincial election has been called.

The chances of any of the three parties having a real debate about health care is remote. When it comes to elections, talking about health care is akin to putting your head on the third rail to see if the train is coming and wondering why your brain is suddenly getting really hot.

The sad thing is, because the politicians don’t want to talk about it, we miss our opportunity to truly debate the kind of health system we want.

Why do we put up with this? Poll after poll Canadians (which we presume to include Ontarians) tell us that their number one concern is health care. So how come we are so docile when an election writ is dropped?

Remember the John Tory election meltdown? Who’d-a-thought religious school funding would have dominated that election? But that’s what happens when you don’t keep your eyes on the prize. You end up focussing on what the politicians want to talk about, not on what you want to talk about.

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Cornwall residents will not have to travel to Ottawa to have tissue samples taken in the lab. Instead just a tiny part of them will make the trip – their tissue samples. The patients can stay where they are, as will the Cornwall-based pathologists whose job it is to analyse the results.

The net effect will be four jobs lost in the Cornwall Community Hospital lab run by the Eastern Ontario Regional Lab Association (EORLA). These are the professional staff that would normally prepare the samples for the pathologists to analyse.

The impact on turnaround will depend on who you talk to.

The hospital argues that this represents an improvement, suggesting the lights are just that much brighter in the big city lab and this will somehow lead to a quality nirvana and rapid turnaround.

The reality is the samples will have to be transported to Ottawa where the specimen slides can be prepared, and then sent back to Cornwall for analysis. That’s a round trip of 212 kilometres.

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