(Niagara At Large is running the following May 24 media release from the office of Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak for our readers’ information. These posts should in no way be interpreted to mean that NAL supports the views of the party or candidate that produced them. This is about putting the information out there and letting you use the comment boxes below as a town hall to share your views. So here we go with this latest one from a party that, when it was in power a decade ago, hardly kept up to spending the amount of money are hospitals needed at the time. Indeed, it was Mike Harris’s Conservative government that created the Niagara Health System that is such a source of controversy in this region today.)
Health Spending Under Hudak to Increase by $6.1 Billion
NEWS:
Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak today announced that his party’s top funding priority will be health care. By the end of its first term, a Hudak government will increase annual investments in health care by nearly $6.1 billion while moving funds out of waste and administration and into care for people.
Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak
As someone with a young daughter and parents who are getting older, Tim Hudak gets how important our health services truly are. His party’s plan will bring change that puts patients at the very centre of health care.
An Ontario PC government’s health care priorities will include:
· Introducing a rigorous system of patient satisfaction and health outcome measures
· Improving health care for Ontario seniors with 40,000 new and renovated long-term care beds
· Increasing investments in home care, and giving families more control over services; and
· Bringing more doctors to the communities that need them. Encouraging doctors, nurses, and physician assistants to work collaboratively in under-serviced areas to meet patients’ needs, and increasing residency placements for medical students from Ontario who have training outside Canada and want to return home to practice
· Getting rid of unnecessary administration, including LHINs, and reinvesting that funding into care for patients.
QUOTES
“I know how important our health services truly are. I get it. I’ve been there. That’s because I have a young daughter and parents who are getting older. My family needs high-quality, reliable health care services – just like all of us do.”
-Tim Hudak, Ontario PC Leader
“We will increase health care funding. We will ensure that the health care system will have the funding it requires, and will put the patient at the centre of healthcare.”
-Tim Hudak, Ontario PC Leader
QUICK FACTS:
· Under Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals, over a billion taxpayer dollars have been wasted in eHealth, LHINs, administration and failed projects that could have been used for patient care.
· Tim Hudak’s health care plan will change the focus the system to put it where it belongs: on the patient.
Health funding under a Tim Hudak government will be $6.1 billion more per year in the final year of its mandate than it is today.
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Niagara At Large 
This is NEWS???? I do believe the word “promise” is also included in this speech. That is, after all, a word commonly used by politicians but promises are seldom if ever honoured.
We have also heard for years, from all parties, that the government will increase the numbers of doctors and nurses. It never happens. Are they going to pull these non-existent people out of their butts? Not enough doctors are available to fill the gaps and fewer young people are going into nursing due to the hours, working conditions, etc. In addition, some geniuses closed down the hospital schools of nursing which produced some of the best nurses in the world (Canadian nurses were not only welcome but in demand everywhere). This increased costs for the students involved and added the study of subjects that had no practical application in the field. These student nurses, no offence to them, had less and less practical experience and seldom could hit the ground running as hospital trained nurses could do. All this at a time when nurses were despaerately needed. A brilliant move. This promise is all just the same old regurgitated crap.
Throwing more money at health care is also not the solution. Getting priorities straight and eliminating the waste (E-health fiascos and bonuses for desk jockeys at all levels for example) and ridiculously excessive numbers of administrators and office bound idiots could solve most if not all of the endemic problems in the system with no or very little increase in expenditure. Throwing good money after bad never solved anything and never will. Since when did front line nurses get a bonus for a job well done??? NEVER! You do a good job because you are proud of your job and because can and should, not in order to get a bonus.
In conclusion, PROMISES, PROMISES, PROMISES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I don’t believe anything Hudak says….Mike Harris and his Common Sense policies are all too fresh in MY memory!
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Conservatives and Liberals want privatized health care. End of story.
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We must change the system of Government so these people can be held accountable not just at election time but all the time – that is the challenge and they will not do it unless they are forced to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Otherwise – same old same old !!!!!!!!!!! Get rid of the party system and institute recall !!!!!!!!!!!!
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You are all making a lot of sense. I don’t trust any of these politicians and what they say. I can only say that many of us are still cleaning up after the mess Harris left us.
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We had better HOPE he does not get the VOTE because if we are stupid enough to allow that to happen then we deserve our own version of Harper.
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