Our rant today is entirely numerical.
1. Robert R. Nardelli, pictured right, has walked from his reign as CEO of Home Depot with a loathsome severance package of $210Million. We dare to call this atrocity by its names at a time when America languishes with 45 Million citizens uninsured for health care, schools and roads crumbling and the American reputation and good will at its lowest ebb world-wide in living memory. Mr. Nardelli follows in the footsteps of the American capitalist hero, Jack Welch, of G.E. fame, who found his form firing hundreds of thousands of ordinary working folks, increasing profit margins short term and moving on to his next odious score.
2. Cameron Ward, a Vancouver lawyer, has been awarded a $10,000 judgement against the City of Vancouver and the B.C. government. In 2002, Mr. Ward got in a scuffle with Vancouver police when they thought he was going to "cream" then Prime Minister Jean Chretien with a pie. Mr. Ward was stripped, skin searched and briefly jailed. The world is blowing itself to pieces, but in Canada we have the luxury of being on high "Pie Alert!"
3. Penny Ballem, the former Deputy Health Minister of the Province of British Columbia, quit 6 months ago. She now reveals that she had encouraged Premier Gordon Campbell to institute a "best practices" regimine with B.C. doctors, such that they might be accountable for their work. Ms. Ballem, herself a physician, pushed for this initiative because she estimated that 60% of diabetics are not getting their proper drugs and 80% of heart patients are getting the wrong drugs. Dr. Ballem still believes that "the system is killing people." The premier turned down her suggestion and she walked.
4. The usual suspects are getting their dandelion in a knot over a recent Ontario court decision naming 3 people as parents of a young boy. The three people are the boy's biological father - a sperm donor, who doesn't live with the child but sees him very regularly - and the two lesbian women who are his live-in parents and have been since day one. Clearly the world is coming to an ignominious end...or at least, so The Hysterics would have you believe.
It's All in the Numbers
Thursday, January 4, 2007
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3 comments:
I heard Penny Ballem interviewed on CBC Radio One this morning. She's very bright and was extremely careful with her choice of words. But in a nutshell she said this: "To run a healthcare system properly you have to do so with facts and not changing this way & that with every 48 hour controversy."
I get the sense that Gordon Campbell et co. didn't want to take the chance of doing things properly via principle but instead will bend to whatever is required to diffuse each controversy.
Isn't this the same approach that gave every rinky dink town in Saskatchewan its own hospital?
Robert,
Thanks for leaving your comment. Where would my secret, little blogsite be without you.
As for the provincial health care mess, one thing is screamingly obvious. The regional health boards are an immense obstacle to the delivery of good service. They must GO at once. Hospitals must become entirely responsible for their own behaviours.
David Berner
David, awareness of your site will grow over time ... and then suddenly take off and you'll be saying "Robert Who?" :-)
You may not remember but during the last federal election you had Ujjal Dosanjh and two other candidates on. I called up and ask Mr. Dosanjh why he, as health minister, didn't know the costs of individual medical procedures. He said that it was impossible to know this and that no health minister ever would.
I then pulled the Donald Trump line out and "fired him"!
Anyhow, any system where the costs are unknown is certain to get more out of control over time. So not only do the health care boards need to go but the individual hospitals need to discard the mentality that there's an endless trough of money available for them no matter how badly they mismanage things!
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