Are Rob Ford’s proposed 2012 budget cuts essentially equivalent to health care cuts?
A group of health care professionals visited city hall early this week with a petition in hand containing nearly 300 signatures and calling on Rob Ford and his council cronies to spare community programs from the axe. The group warned that many of the proposed cuts to city services were tantamount to health care cuts—a move that will likely amplify the growing backlash against the 2012 budget and make the task of selling cuts to the public that much harder for the mayor.
From the Globe and Mail:
The coalition of heath-care workers was assembled recently by [Russ] Ford [no relation to Rob], after discussions with health care colleagues, who felt that the message was not being sent that cuts to services like transport and recreation diminish the health of the city – particularly, he said, the city’s most vulnerable.
Roy Male, a family doctor who practises in the low-income neighbourhood of Regent Park, highlighted how cuts to the Hardship Fund – a fund of last resort that pays for items like prosthetics and wheelchairs – will affect his patients, some of whom have even used the Hardship Fund to cover funerals. He also decried cuts to Wheel-Trans, and [their] effect on dialysis patients.
Given health care’s sacred status, not to mention news that the city is actually facing a budget surplus and not a shortfall (and, of course, that stiffing dialysis patients isn’t exactly easy to spin), we wonder if Ford will change his rhetorical tack when it comes to justifying his beloved “efficiencies.”
Over at the National Post, Chris Selley wagers that Ford will, indeed, stop talking about what the city needs to cut and start talking about what it should cut. As we’ve noted before, Ford often seems more intent on shrinking government than simply curbing spending. It wouldn’t surprise us if he reverted to the standard fiscal conservative dogma and denounced the unnecessarily large government (surpluses are nothing more than over-taxation, yadda, yadda, yadda) as a last-ditch effort to justify his agenda.
• Budget cuts are health care cuts, professionals warn [Toronto Star]
• Health care workers plead for services [Globe and Mail]
Just to be fair, the city has a few problems.
It has to pay a big order for street cars for the TTC. The second thing conservative councilors are suggesting is that it needs to create an account for money when the city needs a little extra.
The counter argument is, Rob Ford spent a lot of it when he froze property taxes and ended the vehicle registry tax.
“and ended the vehicle registry tax.”
He made up for it by raising fares by exactly the same amount. Genius move, since most transit users COULD afford vehicles, but expect a Nanny State to provide them with low-cost, eco-friendly transportation. Perhaps with the coming cutbacks and the fare hike, we will see more cars on the road and frustraded transit users crowding the sidewalks and platforms, so it’s working out well for Ford voters.
Any discussion of dialysis is incomplete without noting that it’s mostly obsolete. Fifteen years ago I showed how to reverse early stage diabetic and hypertensive kidney failure. Diabetes and high blood pressure cause 90% of kidney failure. My paper was eventually published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2002. It contained data on 1,000 male veterans I saw at the St Louis VA Medical Center from 1994 to 1997. However, nobody in healthcare wants to kill the Golden Goose of dialysis. Not Medicare, which is Single Payer for dialysis in the US. Nor the Canadian health service. Dialysis represents too many bureaucrats’ jobs.
But what’s good for healthcare is death for patients. If any patients out there happen to read this comment (assuming it’s actually printed, which isn’t true for many newspapers), please contact GenoMed at http://www.genomed.com and click on “Contact.” I’d be happy to do my best. If you still have half your kidney function, I’m confident I can keep you off the kidney machine.
Great stuff, Dr. Moskowitz! I think you found a way to spin they city’s stiffing of dialysis patients.
“Their treatment is unnecessary because medical science doesn’t embrace new ideas because it’s controlled by greedy bureaucrats holding back those brave, entrepreneurial doctors.” I think Ford voters will buy that! Everyone knows the government is plotting against us!!!