Last Updated on: 14th September 2022, 05:01 pm
Seriously, why? They hate you. They hate sick people, too. They’re not so hot on any of your friends and relations, either. If you’d like to tell me I’m wrong about any of that, then go ahead and offer up a good explanation for Doug Ford’s government ramming through an awful piece of legislation designed to separate elderly and severely ill people from their loved ones without any public consultation.
Don’t worry about it, they say. Nobody will be physically placed anywhere without their consent. They’ll only be extorted to the tune of $400 a day until they come around and see things our way.
This is all being done under the guise of freeing up much needed hospital beds, which is rich coming from the same people who spent a whole lot of air in the last couple years talking up how many beds they’ve been adding to the system.
Worse yet, it’s probably not even going to fix anything. The hospitals have their problems, yes. But I can’t recall any hospital that has the kinds of problems that our long term care homes do.
What the government is doing here is nothing more than cruelty and incompetence all around. To make it look like they’re fixing one overworked, under-staffed segment of the healthcare system, they’re kicking the problem over to a different overworked, under-staffed segment of the healthcare system. And in the process, they’re bullying vulnerable families into separations that may well break them financially and emotionally.
Well done as usual, Doug. If this is what government for the people looks like, I’m not sure I want to be a person anymore.
The province said ALC patients would be assigned a placement coordinator who would assess the patient’s eligibility to enter a long-term care home based on the facility’s ability to care for the patient’s needs.
The government said the home could be as far away as 150 km from the patient’s home community in northern Ontario and 70 km in southern Ontario — the equivalent of driving from Queen’s Park to Hamilton.
“The distances are based on input we received from the sector and provide hospitals with the options needed for this policy to be effective,” the government said in a news release.
The government said once a suitable home was found the placement coordinator would “authorize the patient’s admission” while the presiding doctor would simultaneously discharge the patient from hospital.
In effect, the patient would be given two options: move into a long-term care home or face a daily hospital charge of $400 beginning on Nov. 20.“This fee would be charged to any discharged patient who refuses to leave hospital,” the Ford government said, but added that patients cannot be physically transferred to a long-term care home without consent.