Christian Conservative Christian "Independent"

I'm an evangelical Christian, member of the CPC, but presently & unjustly exiled to wander the political wilderness.
All opinions expressed here are solely my own.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Health User Fees?

Wow, now that's rich... based on one offhand comment by an individual, on an idea of his own, not the Party, the Ontario Liberals are accusing the PC's of looking at implementing "User Fees".

Guys? YOU'RE MAKING ME PAY ONE BIG HONKING ANNUAL USER FEE VIA MY "HEALTH PREMIUM"... and I've barely even used the Health system in the last couple of years!

Therefore, I actually agree with you... LET'S ELIMINATE THE HEALTH PREMIUM USER FEE! Join the Facebook group, and let's scrap health user fees!

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posted by Christian Conservative @ 2:40 p.m.  

11 Comments:

  • At Mon Sep 17, 04:38:00 p.m. EDT, Blogger Jeff said…

    don't like paying the health care user fee huh? hardly use the system therefore you want out. i see.

    the average cost of health care insurance for american families is over $11,000 per year. you pay your insurance premium whether you're ill or not.

    you probably haven't used the public school system in awhile, maybe you should be excused from contributing tax dollars to public education.

    how often do you drive on highway 10 or 89? when was the last time to you called the fire department or needed a cop? let's pull your tax money out of those services also.

    get the picture? that's the problem with conservatives, it's always about me me me.

     

  • At Mon Sep 17, 06:44:00 p.m. EDT, Blogger Christian Conservative said…

    You missed it Jeff... I actually have no problem paying my taxes for these sorts of services, for myself and for those who are down and out...

    The point I was making was that it was a little rich for the Liberals to try and say we were advocating "user fees" when they're responsible for implementing a healthcare fee that's ALMOST 9,000% (yes, NINE THOUSAND PERCENT, for the average person) higher than the "user fee" that this one Tory MPP was simply musing about! (and that is not even a part of the platform!)

     

  • At Mon Sep 17, 07:01:00 p.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I actually have no problem paying my taxes for these sorts of services, for myself and for those who are down and out..

    Let it be known that Christian Conservative supports the McGuinty Health Care Premium!

    Good for you. Glad to hear that you don't support John Tory's position of ripping nearly $3 billion out of the health care system, closing hospitals, and firing nurses by the thousands.

    Frank Klees proposed the introduction of private health care in Ontario when he ran for the leadership of your party. The PCs do support private health care in this province and Klees is trying to bring it in slowly, by stealth...that is the real issue here.

    GASP..the hidden agenda lurks again!

     

  • At Mon Sep 17, 08:53:00 p.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    The average cost of health care in Canada is about $20,000.00 dollars a year for middle class families in Canada and that is for the privilege of waiting in line for hours at the emergency. That's the problem with Liberals it's all about taking from me me me. For those who think that it is selfish for individuals to want to keep their money. When was the last time a government with a surplus gave it back?

     

  • At Mon Sep 17, 09:39:00 p.m. EDT, Blogger Christian Conservative said…

    "Glad to hear that you don't support John Tory's position of
    ripping nearly $3 billion out of the health care system, closing
    hospitals, and firing nurses by the thousands"

    Sigh... another lemming spouting Liberal propoganda...

    As a employee of the Healthcare "industry" (and it is just that, and industry) under the past and the current regiems, I can vouch for the fact that what your spouting off is nothing more that pure Liberal propoganda, and bears nothing of truth.

     

  • At Mon Sep 17, 09:56:00 p.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Anon at 7:01. Try actually reading what was written before spouting your mouth off. Having said that, I wonder why I even bother, if you are not willing to put a name to a comment, perhaps you are not as secure in your views as you claim to be.

     

  • At Mon Sep 17, 11:31:00 p.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    When I hear of Americans losing their homes and all of their savings over an illness - we got pretty cheap insurance here in Canada - appreciate it.

     

  • At Tue Sep 18, 12:10:00 a.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Hey Anon,

    Why do we always compare ourselves to the Americans? There's a whole world out there that we can learn from. Why are people like you so close minded?

    Soup

     

  • At Tue Sep 18, 08:13:00 a.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I am a Canadian living in the US. I would chose my current health system over Ontario in a heartbeat. The ontario system, to be blunt, sucks.

    For all our shortcomings (don't believe Michael Moore, by the way), we have a fantastic system.

     

  • At Thu Sep 20, 02:05:00 p.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    You're right. The US has the right model. Privatize, privatize, privatize, privatize. Get with program Dalton!

     

  • At Thu Sep 20, 03:10:00 p.m. EDT, Blogger Christian Conservative said…

    Hey Anonymous@2:05pm, you've got it all wrong. The US model SUCKS, and I don't advocate anything of the sort... try reading my blog posts on healthcare.

    Why is it that people can't understand a simple concept? I DO NOT SUPPORT PRIVATIZING OUR SYSTEM! There's a HUGE difference between "privatization" and private DELIVERY of selected services.

    Sometimes, the private sector can do things WAY better than the public sector... sometimes they can do it equally as well, and other times, the public sector is the best means by which a job can be done.

    I'll give you a concrete example of sucessful public/private co-operation from my own experience... the first Hospital I worked in had a private company running the IT system... for profit. GASP! Say it ain't so! A private company, working for profit, in a Hospital! Yep, and the entire Hospital was greatful that we were there. Before we took over, the IT department was run in-house... problem was, all the vacancies went NOT to the most qualified, but to the most senior union type who wanted it. As a direct result of years of incompetence, THEIR SYSTEMS EXPERIENCED FAILURES ON A DAILY BASIS. Their file system was corrupted, their e-mail was about 3 years beyond extinct, and staff were used to the regular overhead pages, "Attention: The [blank] system is presently unavailable". ([blank] being the name of the affected system, not an explitive to describe the person's frustration)

    Fast forward three years, to right before I was about to leave... the infractructure was almost entirely replaced, and had an ongoing 99.95% uptime record. Overhead pages due to system failures were almost non-existant, and staff confidence in the systems were extremely high. Our helpdesk actually had an 80+% POE (point of entry) call resolution rate, a fantastic achievement for any helpdesk. All that because a private company came in and, for profit, and got the job that needed to be done done.

    Now, you might say that IT and living patients are a totally different case, and I'd agree, but only up to a point. My point is that when there is an identified problem with the system, steps need to be taken to correct it.

    For example, we have a problem with OR room availability. How do we address that? One idea is to have more surguries scheduled into the night, but who wants to work nights?

    Having also worked for a while in Optometery, I know of fully equiped OR's already here in Ontario that are sitting idle a lot of the time... they're used to perform for-profit non-OHIP insured procedures, and the owners are more than willing to open their doors to Optomologists to perform OHIP-funded cataract surgeries... and those Optomologists would be happy to take them up on that offer, but can't, because they're not allowed to. The reason the waiting lists are so long for cataract surgeries? Lack of OR time.

    There are lots of other simple procedures that could be done by the private sector with no risk to patients, or to our public sector system... a public sector system which I openly support, and am happily employed by.

    And I would never adovcate that we implement any other sort of US-style system, thank you very much... healthcare ought to remain public, however, if the public sector needs some help to deliver these services, there ought not to be a barrier in the way on innovation.

    Is this so hard to understand? Is this a concept that threatens our public institutions?

    Or, is this a concept that could actually help us solve the problems we're facing?

    I vote for the latter.

     

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