health care

Wednesday August 24, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday August 24, 2022

So, four premiers go into a bar …

October 29, 2019

Something sadly predictable happens whenever a group of premiers gets together to talk, in particular about health care. We have to do better, a Team Canada approach, equal partners blah, blah, blah. And oh, by the way give us money, Ottawa. Loads more money. But don’t attach any strings, because that would intrude on provincial jurisdiction, which health care is.

All this happened this week when Maritime premiers and Doug Ford got together in New Brunswick. Ford said: “We look forward to having a collaborative relationship with the federal government … This is a Team Canada approach that we need to take.”

“The delivery of health care in P.E.I. and across the country is going to be fundamentally different than it used to be,” said the island province’s premier Dennis King.

Saturday August 20, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday August 20, 2022

Ambulance use in Ontario has grown far faster than population, study finds

A new study finds ambulance use in Ontario increased significantly in the years leading up to the pandemic, outpacing the growth in both population and hospital emergency room visits by other means. 

September 15, 2021

The study was led by researchers at Hamilton’s McMaster University and it looked at the yearly numbers of patients transported by ambulance paramedics to hospital emergency rooms across Ontario from 2010 to 2019. 

It found a 38.3 per cent increase in the number of ambulance patient transports to ERs over the decade, an increase four times larger than the province’s 9.6 per cent population growth over the same period. 

“What our work points to is that this current model of [emergency department] transports is likely unsustainable for the province,” said Ryan Strum, the lead researcher for the paper and a PhD student at McMaster who also works as a paramedic.

Thursday August 11, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday August 11, 2022

Delivering new services ‘complicated,’ Freeland says of planned dental care program

April 8, 2022

The government is working hard to meet its end-of-year deadline to deliver dental-care coverage to kids, the deputy prime minister said Tuesday, but added providing new services is “complicated.”

The Liberals agreed to offer dental coverage to low- and middle-income children by the end of the year as part of their confidence and supply deal with the New Democrats to keep the minority government from toppling before 2025.

Several groups have raised concerns about the very tight deadline, and four sources close to the program say the government is working on a temporary solution to give money directly to qualifying families while it comes up with a permanent program.

Freeland did not confirm or deny the government’s immediate plans but said the Liberals are committed to the dental-care program, and it’s a commitment she’s “happy to make.”

Wednesday August 3, 2022

‘People are suffering’: ICU nurse says staffing shortages at hospitals are getting worse

September 15, 2021

Nearly two-and-a-half years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, one front-line nurse says emergency rooms are stretched thin amid constant staffing shortages.

“Things are worse now. And I don’t think the general public understands how difficult it is to be a patient or a nurse right now,” Birgit Umaigba, an intensive care unit nurse based in Toronto, told CTV News Channel on Monday.

Several hospitals across Ontario announced this weekend they’d be closing temporarily closing or reducing services in their emergency rooms and ICUs due to the ongoing staffing crunch.

Tuesday June 28, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 28, 2022

Equitable abortion access now

The U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortion ruling was not a surprise. But it was stunning all the same.

Stunning for the fact the court actually reversed its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, upending almost 50 years of constitutionally-protected access to abortion. It’s disturbing for its impact on gender rights. And it’s deeply upsetting for the immediate practical effect it now has on individuals seeking the procedure.

May 23, 2014

We knew it was coming, thanks to the leak of a draft ruling in May. Those who held out faint hope that the outcry that followed that revelation might prompt the top justices to rethink or water down their ruling were left disappointed. They did not.

The decision removes the protection which had guaranteed access to abortions. With that protection gone, it’s now up to each individual state to determine the legality of the procedure. In more than a dozen states, abortion is now illegal as a result of the decision. Other states, like California, are looking for enshrine the right to abortion. And in many others, the fate of the procedure will hinge on protracted political debates.

In their dissenting opinion, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan declared that the majority refused to consider the “life-altering” consequences of reversing the law.

“After today, young women will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers had. The majority accomplishes that result without so much as considering how women have relied on the right to choose or what it means to take that right away,” they wrote.