Thousands of surgeries may be cut in Metro Vancouver due to government underfunding, leaked paper

[Daylight]

Source: Vancouver Sun

VANCOUVER — Vancouver patients needing neurosurgery, treatment for vascular diseases and other medically necessary procedures can expect to wait longer for care, NDP health critic Adrian Dix said Monday.

Dix said a Vancouver Coastal Health Authority document shows it is considering chopping more than 6,000 surgeries in an effort to make up for a dramatic budgetary shortfall that could reach $200 million.

According to the leaked document, Vancouver Coastal — which oversees the budget for Vancouver General and St. Paul’s hospitals, among other health-care facilities — is looking to close nearly a quarter of its operating rooms starting in September and to cut 6,250 surgeries, including 24 per cent of cases scheduled from September to March and 10 per cent of all medically necessary elective procedures this fiscal year.

D’Angelo said Vancouver Coastal’s deficit is closer to $90 million — almost a third of which ($23 million) has already been absorbed through reductions in non-clinical administration efficiencies.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/story_print.html?id=1878506&sponsor

[NYC_SKP]

1. Not a surprise. This recession is global. Doesn't mean the system is broken. nt

[Dreamer Tatum]

4. That doesn't make a lot of sense

Are you saying that if the US is in a budget shortfall that doctors should tell patients, "hey, things are tough all over?"

I thought that the point of taking healthcare finance out of private hands was to make it impervious to market swings and
corporate demands. I don't think decreased healthcare due to budget deficit is a concept that will help single-payer in the
least.

[Craftsman]

43. The public option could turn and bite dems.

The first time a US patient is told sorry we can't afford to this procedure under a public option and it comes out the dems will lose epically in the next election.

[iverglas]

44. you thought pretty weird, dincha?

I thought that the point of taking healthcare finance out of private hands was to make it impervious to market swings and corporate demands.

Did it take you long to make that up and put the words together so it looked like they made sense?


If the big employer moves out of your town and half the people are laid off and can't pay their property taxes, do you think maybe snow removal services the next winter might be cut? Side streets will get ploughed only once a week, that sort of thing?

What do you imagine the BC government does when it needs money to pay doctors? Get the ink jet printers warmed up?

If a government's tax base declines, the services the government can pay for will be affected.

The "market swings" in issue have precisely bugger all to do with the costs of healthcare. The issue is the tax base. There are no "corporate demands" within 10 bargepole lengths of this issue.


I don't think decreased healthcare due to budget deficit is a concept that will help single-payer in the least.

And I guess all your public schools just shut down when school boards started not being able to pay for basic supplies, as many of them now can't. That public education thing was just an experiment that didn't work.


It's amazing the ludicrous lengths some people will go to when there's an agenda at stake.

[area51]

46. Great post.

I wish I could nominate it for the Greatest Page.

[iverglas]

47. well ta ;)

Buried in a bit of a dead thread as it is now ... ;)

You can count on us Canuckistanians to debunk the bunk whenever it pops up. Bleeding whack-a-mole though it is.

Search for "shona holmes" at youtube and enjoy a whole lot of Canadians getting stroppy at FoxNews. Not all are as civilized as I (the misogyny of much of it is embarrassing), but you'll see what happens when ya lie about our healthcare!

:toast:

[Dreamer Tatum]

48. Only on DU...

...can someone support your claim and ridicule you at the same time.

Only on DU.

[iverglas]

53. you thought I was supporting your claim?

Your claim - what appeared to be a particular claim couched in the snidey insinuatory so you said kinda way one gets so used to - isn't something I support.

Was one of us not clear?

[Dreamer Tatum]

54. Me think Obama plan good. Me like public option.

Is THAT clear enough for you?

[iverglas]

55. not especially, but whatever

I wouldn't take "public option" if it came with a yacht and a lot of gold bullion. But I don't have to. I have single-payer.

So if your post meant what I thought it did about single payer, I'm not seeing us being in agreement.

If it meant something else, I just dunno.

[fascisthunter]

25. it's BS

[Butch350]

32. I agree. Oh no the health industry has gotten to canada.

[grantcart]

2. so you are arguing that we should follow Britain's system and not Canada?

[Oregone]

7. Posting an article isn't the same as making an argument

That aside, Canada needs to start exploring the socialization of health care delivery, and Britain is as good of place to look to as any other. Even a single-payer system will drown in soaring health care costs.

[grantcart]

11. You may have noticed that there have been a number of very new

posters who have started posting threads all against government run health care.


Here is another example

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4020664



I don't think that they were interested in Breaking News but something else entirely.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Indydem]

12. Not all of us can afford to make 6 posts a day.

Not defending the OP or saying he's not a troll, but post count shouldn't matter unless the post is expressly flamebait.

We can't all afford to have your posting history, which is commendable, but unrealistic.

[newblewtoo]

36. Excellent point

Post history and join date can tell more than mere post count. It is nice to have a high sperm count too, but then it only takes one to get 'er done.

I guarantee there are more than a few in the thousand plus club who do little more than type "kick". :kick:

[Oregone]

3. Vancouver Island Health Authority is doing the same. BC is in bad shape

Yet the politicians are tiptoeing around it and pretending the olympics will solve everything.

[endarkenment]

5. What should the people of Vancouver do about this?

[villager]

6. article states they were performing 10% more surgeries than last year...

...and had cut down on wait times.

this would revert the wait times to previous levels, presumably. The trade-offs, perhaps, of not undergoing personal bankruptcy to have an operation?

[hwmnbn]

9. The poster conveniently snipped this....

The health authority confirmed the document is genuine, but said it represents ideas only.

“It is a planning document. It has not been approved or implemented,” said spokeswoman Anna Marie D’Angelo.

So I call bullshit!! This article also appeared on a wingnut board this morning.

[Oregone]

10. It is a fact though that BC is billions in the red (for health and other sectors)

And VIHA is doing the same:
http://www.timescolonist.com/health/Vancouver+Island+Health+Authority+jobs+sell+assets+hike+fees+balance+budget/1793378/story.html

So itll probably happen there too.

[Soylent Brice]

13. nice catch. so, are we getting pizza for dinner, or what?

[Bennyboy]

14. Oh no, gotta leave this up...

Just to show that we now have undoubtedly paid trolls posting bullshit articles...

[Soylent Brice]

16. good point, but they're nonetheless annoying.

[Doctor_J]

18. Yes, they're getting $5/post

plus health care benefits.

[Indydem]

28. Where do I sign up?

I need insurance!

[Doctor_J]

40. No problem! You get to be a client of United Health

Well, maybe a problem

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x472968

[canadianbeaver]

15. I bet alot of money going towards the Olympics could help.

I think peoples health is more important than the games,IMO...

[Lagomorph]

37. I agree

Upwards of 2,500 patients waiting for surgery for everything from blocked arteries to cancer to hernias will find their elective surgeries postponed during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/elective+surgeries+delayed+2010+Games/1795763/story.html

[totodeinhere]

17. I wouldn't necessarily dismiss this story. The Sun is a legitimate mainstream newspaper.

And I don't understand some posters here. If this is a legitimate story why not talk about it? Are we supposed to bury our heads in the sand just because we don't like what the story says?

Look, the Canadian system is not perfect. No health care delivery system is. But it is infinitely better than the American system, which is totally dysfunctional as we all know. And if the Canadian system does have some problems, let's talk about it and learn from it. Perhaps this information can help us to make our health care reform better.

[pecwae]

41. There's a trend to summarily

dismiss stories that aren't palatable. It's childish and looks as silly as anything the other side does.

There's no reason not to take problems within a HC system like the Canadian model seriously. Study them, determine the cause and propose a solution before the same trouble arises in our newly proposed system. What's wrong with acting preemptively?

[TrogL]

51. ROFL oh please stop you're killing me

The Sun is a legitimate mainstream newspaper

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!

The Sun newspaper chain is the Canadian/British version of Fox news.

They're so full of shit they don't even make good birdcage paper - they won't absorb any more.

Since the National Post went belly-up, they've gone back to being the house mag of the Conservative Party.

[totodeinhere]

52. The Sun is condervative by Canadian standards.

But by United States standards it's probably moderate. The same applies to the Conservative Party of Canada which by our standards is probably center left. As a general rule of thumb conservatives here are far to the right of conservatives up there.

[RedEarth]

19. Gosh, this article is really convincing ....sounds like we should stay with for profit healthcare

:sarcasm:

[SecularMotion]

20. Something strange about this. It may be a phony story

The article at the link is re-directed. It does not link back to www.vancouversun.com.

I can't find the article or link on the actual website.

Any web developers out there who can check this out?

Edit: I've alerted the mods on this post. It doesn't link to the source named.

[totodeinhere]

21. You didn't look very far. here is a link to the original Vancouver Sun article which was published.

on August 10.

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Leaked+plan+proposes+cuts+surgeries+across+Metro+Vancouver/1878506/story.html

But if you read the article you will see that this might involve Canadian politics more than anything else since the story was originally leaked by "NDP health critic Adrian Dix." The NDP is a Canadian political party.

[SecularMotion]

24. Thanks for your help, I wonder why the OP didn't use this link?

I scanned all the links on the home page and the health page. I didn't see this link.

The link provided on the OP acted strange in my browser. It was treated as an image and re-sized my browser window. That raised my suspicions.

[totodeinhere]

27. Google News is a good resource. I found the link there without any problems. n/t

[Indydem]

29. The link was from the "print article" function.

It strips off all the extra crap off the web page and gives a clean version, and yes, the resized window is normal.

[SecularMotion]

31. Thank you, that makes sense. nt

[SecularMotion]

26. On second thought the original link may not have been used

because the article was originally published on 8/10, which violates LBN rules.

[Spazito]

23. I can't find it on the Vancouver Sun site either...

and, given the Global communications which owns the Sun is right-wing, I am sure they would have it front and center if it was their article.

Here is the link to the Vancouver Sun site:

http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

[fascisthunter]

22. nice try

fail

[wolfgangmo]

30. This is normal for the Canadian political process

For every MLA who is given a cabinet position there is an official critic assigned to critique that persons job. It is normal during a Question Period to have this kind of thing brought up and discussed.

It doesn't mean anything. The worst case scenario here is that they will revert to last years level's of service.

[Posteritatis]

49. +1 (nt)

[DU GrovelBot]

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[Shireling]

34. Lies!!! Lies!!! Lies!!!

[FlyingSquirrel]

39. You are fooling nobody. Enjoy your stay.

[No Elephants]

35. So, who leaked it? A member of the Vancouver branch of The Family or a member of the Vancouver gun

lobby, or a member of the Vancouver Evangelicals United Society (ok. I made up the last one.)

[CreekDog]

38. Our insurance companies eliminate surgeries to impress their stockholders

some health insurance CEO's make more than Vancouver's health deficit.

as far as I can tell money for our surgeries is reduced to pay those exhorbitant salaries.

[Javaman]

42. The OP disrupted poorly. :) nt

[iverglas]

45. for anyone actually interested in critique of the Cdn health system

that isn't coming from right-wing trolls, try here:

http://www.healthcoalition.ca/

The Canadian Health Coalition, a **progressive** organization.

One of the original prime movers was Shirley Douglas, an actor and social activist and daughter of Tommy Douglas ("the father of Canadian medicare" -- and a founder of the NDP) and mother of Kiefer Sutherland (PASS THE SALT, ZOE).

Canadians talking about the Canadian system. That being kinda who's worth listening to.

[TrogL]

50. WARNING - there's an election coming up in Canada

...hence you're going to be seeing all sorts of outrageous stuff in Canadian news.

Health care is going to be the #1 issue in our next election which will probably happen some time in the fall.

The Conservatives are looking to destroy the existing system and go for a two-tier one where the rich get good (but expensive) service, and the not-so-rich get whatever's left. The front page of today's Sun claims doctors support it. Of course they do - I'd like to get rich too.

The NDP are looking to expand the existing system to include a drug plan.

[Ken Burch]

56. British Columbia has a right-wing provincial government

(lead by a party that is comically mislabeled as "The B.C. Liberals"), that is ideologically opposed to social services of any kind, and especially Canada's single-payer healthcare system(which, although it's federally funded, is administered by the provinces-in this case, by the provincial government that doesn't actually WANT people to have single-payer healthcare and would shut down the system instantly if such a step wasn't an act of political suicide).

Thus, it's in the political interest of the "Liberals" to make the healthcare system as ineffective as possible, in order to build up resentment and thus create support for what only a tiny ultraconservative minority of British Columbians currently support: health care privatization and a two-tier healthcare system in which only those who could afford to pay out of pocket would get decent healthcare.

[CHIMO]

58. Note

The Federal government funds about 25% of the cost.

[Ken Burch]

59. Yes, but the provincial government actually administers the program

And the Conservative federal government, which would also shut down single-payer in a heartbeat(that is, if if anyone in the Tory party actually had a beating heart)if it wasn't political suicide for them.

[CHIMO]

60. Yes

And yes.

For an easy read on the rules and how it works...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Health_Act

and a government description of the act...
http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/prbpubs/944-e.htm

[Ken Burch]

57. For those who hadn't picked up on it, Daylight's sun has set

And his pizza has been delivered.

Let's have the Black Crowes play him off:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtMPlY3duz4