By Doug Draper
There was Premier Dalton McGuinty on a CHCH television news clip last week, trying to persuade us that his Liberal government is not gutting fair access to hospital services in small communities across Niagara and the rest of the province.
A sign of the times. An American private health care provider is posting billboards like this in Niagara, Ont. to take advantage of a health care system here that is beginning to fail us. Photo by Doug Draper
“I do sense a responsibility on behalf of Ontarians to do everything we can to ensure that they have access to the best possible health care, as close to home as is reasonably possible,” insisted McGuinty in response to questions a scrum o reporters asked him about comments made earlier by Dr. Alan Drummond, a spokesman for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. “I am convinced we are leaders on that score.”
McGuinty was responding to comments Dr. Drummond and his association were making on the death this past holiday season of Fort Erie teen Reilly Anzovino.
Reilly, who would have celebrated her 19th birthday last week, died in the early hours of Dec. 27 following a traffic accident in her hometown that had her being rushed to an emergency room at a Welland hospital because as of last summer, thanks to the McGuinty government, the emergency rooms at Fort Erie’s Douglas Memorial Hospital and Port Colborne Hospital have been downgraded to urgent care centres that will no longer take patients suffering some of the most serious medical emergencies. Continue reading
Niagara At Large 