Giant umbrella part of Medicare protest July 18

Posted on July 11, 2012 | Leave a comment

Health care advocates are urging the Harper government to return to the table and negotiate a new 2014 health accord with the provinces. The message is part of a national day of action July 18 – a week before provincial and territorial Premiers are scheduled to meet to discuss the issue.

Earlier this year the Harper government told the provinces what their health transfers would be, showing no interest in how that money got spent. The plan includes 6 per cent increases to 2018. After that the transfers will be indexed to economic growth with a minimum floor of 3 per cent.

In Toronto health care advocates are being urged to meet July 18 at 12 noon in Riverdale Park East, across from the Holy Eucharist Ukrainian Church (Bain and Broadview).

The protestors will be forming a giant umbrella symbolizing the protection Canadians receive from public Medicare.

The Ontario Health Coalition, the Council of Canadians and Canadian Doctors for Medicare are joining with other advocacy organizations to send a message to the Harper government to get back to the table.

In April a Vector Poll indicated 57 per cent of Canadians disapprove of the Harper government’s refusal to negotiate a new National Health Accord with the provinces.  In the same poll, 58 per cent of Canadians said they feel the federal government should “set standards that the provinces have to follow” to make sure Canadians in different provinces have access to the same quality of health care.

Watch this short cartoon on the Medicare “umbrella.”

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Venture capitalist says middle class are job creators, not super rich

Posted on July 10, 2012 | 1 comment

“In a capitalist economy the true job creators are middle class consumers,” says American venture capitalist Nick Hanauer. Delivering a “TED talk” earlier this year, Hanauer says “taxing the rich to make investments that make the middle class grow and thrive is the single shrewdest thing we can do for the middle class, for the poor, and for the rich.”

Hanauer says the U.S. is unjustly deifying the rich, noting with a smile that it’s not a big “jump from job creator to creator.”

Hanauer is himself among the super rich, but says “rich people like me don’t create jobs.” If tax cuts to the wealthy really did work “today we would be drowning in jobs.”

If the median household income kept pace with the economy since the 1970s, American families would be earning $92,000 per year, not $50,000, he says.

Income distribution is a major factor in the social determinants of health.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.

Watch Hanaeur’s TED talk below.

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48 per cent say supervisor taking Niagara hospital in wrong direction

Posted on July 6, 2012 | 1 comment

The Niagara Health System’s supervisor has commissioned a poll on his interim recommendations for the struggling multi-site hospital.

If anything, the poll confirmed why Kevin Smith had been appointed by the province.

Pollara conducted a telephone survey in June of at least 75 adult residents in each of the 12 communities served by the hospital.

The overall impression rating was 4.5 out of 10 – far below the usual 90 per cent plus approval rating of most Ontario hospitals. 13 per cent described their impression as “very negative.” The worst scores came from Fort Erie and Port Colborne, two communities that have already lost their hospital emergency departments.

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Hospitals could face higher municipal taxes

Posted on July 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

Ontario municipalities may have a legitimate beef with the way hospitals pay taxes, but the timing couldn’t be worse.

All levels of government appear to be scrambling to make ends meet without having to pass increased costs on to citizens in the form of taxes. The results are one cash-strapped level of government going after another cash-strapped level of government.

Instead of paying municipal property taxes, universities, colleges, hospitals and detention centres pay something called a Heads and Beds payment.

The Heads and Beds rate has not changed since 1987 – a flat rate of $75 per head/bed.

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Refugee Health: The Harper government blinks

Posted on July 4, 2012 | Leave a comment

The Harper government blinked this week.

Determined to bulldoze through unpopular cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) for refugees, the government partially backed off claiming they were simply “clarifying the wording” on the plan.

The plan provides interim comprehensive health coverage to refugees and asylum seekers until they qualify for provincial and territorial health coverage.

Cuts were due to take place at the end of June, but over the long weekend the wording was changed on the government website, maintaining so-called “supplemental benefits” to United Nations’ refugees the government selects and brings to Canada. The benefits are also being maintained for some privately sponsored refugees.

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Private health care: Placing children at risk to increase profit

Posted on July 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

You have to wonder how executives at GlaxoSmithKline sleep at night?

Yesterday the British drug manufacturer agreed to a civil settlement with the U.S. Government in which they will pay $3 billion in fines — the largest health care fraud settlement in that country’s history.

GSK admitted to misbranding antidepressants and marketing them for uses not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. That included marketing the antidepressant drugs to children despite warnings of an increased risk of suicide for children under 18.

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Saturday Diablogue story pile-up

Posted on June 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

In sports they call it plays of the week. For us, it’s just our way to address the pile up of issues surrounding health care this week.

Labour issues are very important to us given OPSEU presents more than 41,000 members who work in our health system, about 700 more having voted to join us in just the last month. They include health care workers at such diverse locations as Orillia’s Soldier’s Memorial Hospital, London Health Sciences, the Oshawa Health Centre and Trellis Mental Health and Development Services, located throughout much of Southern Ontario. Therefore the Ontario PC white paper proposing changes to the province’s labour laws certainly caught our attention. What was more surprising, as our translator pointed out, is the Tories rushed it out in English only. Do the Tories understand there are more than 580,000 francophones who live and vote here? The PC web site offers no French button like we do here at Diablogue.

Canadian Blood Services has announced it is opening a second National Contact Centre (NCC) in Saint John, New Brunswick. The announcement follows CBS’ closure of its blood distribution centre in that city earlier this year. The present NCC is in Sudbury, Ontario. CBS Chief Operating Officer Ian Mumford says Saint John was chosen because of the presence of a bilingual workforce, although the city of 128,000 (metropolitan) is one of the more anglophone parts of the province. It has a large cross at the tip of the downtown peninsula celebrating the arrival of the Irish. The most recent census shows a little over 5,000 residents who have French as their mother tongue. Did Mumford confuse Saint John with Moncton? Mumford also says a second national call centre is necessary “for business continuity,” suggesting that “in the event of a crisis, people who need to contact Canadian Blood Services will always be able to do so.” Crisis? This is a phone centre that handles both inbound and outbound calls with donors and arranges appointments for the donation clinics. Ontario politicians may want to pay attention to the jobs, as Mumford is stating the current contact centre work will be redistributed and that additional information will be provided after a “more detailed staffing analysis is complete.” CBS closed its Thunder Bay operation in April of this year, shedding about 25 northern jobs.

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Hospitals to compete on cost as province introduces new funding mechanisms

Posted on June 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

In March Deb Matthews told the media that 36 hospitals will have their budgets cut by as much as three per cent when this year’s new hospital funding formula rolls out.

This week the Ministry held a technical briefing and remarkably told its labour stakeholders that in year one about 10 per cent of hospitals will see increases in funding no greater than 1.8 per cent and decreases no greater than 1.5 per cent.

They also state that 90 per cent of hospitals will see less than a one per cent difference in their budget allocation, plus or minus.

Back in March 91 hospitals were expected to “benefit” from the new formula. Now the Ministry says only 90 hospitals will participate – small rural and northern hospitals being excluded from the Health Based Activity Model (HBAM).

That’s a big difference.

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Tories use think tank notorious for fabricating evidence to support white paper

Posted on June 29, 2012 | 1 comment

It is interesting that the Ontario Tories quote the Pacific Research Institute in this week’s white paper on labour.

In the paper, the Tories say the average yearly economic growth in U.S. States with voluntary union rules is 4.4 per cent compared to 3.6 per cent in those which use a system similar to Ontario’s.

Oddly, the PRI says the “calculations” are based on data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Calculations? What kind of calculations? Wouldn’t the bureau have available economic growth numbers for the States? Why would they need to be “calculated” by PRI?

The PRI is an extreme right-wing organization whose vision, according to their website, is to promote “individual freedom and personal responsibility. The Institute believes these principles are best encouraged through policies that emphasize a free economy, private initiative, and limited government (emphasis added).”

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Ontario PC white paper plans to take labour legislation back to the 19th century

Posted on June 29, 2012 | 3 comments

The Ontario PCs have staked out a far-right position on labour with the release Wednesday of their white paper “Paths to Prosperity: Flexible Labour Markets.”

For Ontario’s heavily organized health care sector, this is a ‘sit up and pay attention moment,’ even if the Tories chose to do it in the summer months when most are paying less attention to the goings-on at Queen’s Park.

The Tories evidently believe the path to the 21st century lies in the 19th century as they undermine the power of working people to get organized, seek reasonable wages, and expect fair treatment within the workplace.

For example, it is a head scratcher how ending source dues deductions would increase prosperity, unless they are counting the number of people Ontario’s unions would have to hire to process and collect dues invoices from tens of thousands of individual members. And the cost of all that inefficiency would be borne by the workers themselves.

Hands up those who would prefer to receive a monthly dues invoice to remit rather than having the cost simply deducted from source?

Does Hudak intend to do the same for United Way donations, Canada Savings Bonds, income taxes, employment insurance and other deductions that come off our paycheques?

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