Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Alberta's 'Third Way' could mean health-care showdown with Ottawa

Article


Alberta has outlined its 10-point plan to reshape medicare and in the process has unleashed what could become a major challenge to the Canada Health Act.

Who cares ?

Why ? Because in all of ontario there are only allowed 250 new doctors per year.
Out of thousands and thousands of applicants. (edit: one presumes there is a similar limit in Alberta , though I don't know what the limit is)


Doctors already have the ability to opt out of the public system completely in Alberta, but the government says that isn't happening, so it wants to introduce a hybrid system allowing physicians to offer private delivery of health care, if they submit a business plan and can prove that the public system won't be harmed.


Notice how the option of allowing more than 250 doc's a year to be trained never seems to come up ? Is never mentioned ?

They want to draw on an already limited pool of doctors when they can easily double or triple the size of that pool with no loss in quality. Do you know how many thousands and thousands of people would love to become doctors ? And skimming the top 1000 instead of the top 250 is just a drop in the bucket in that number.

But this never comes up for some reason.
Who the heck is making money off of this , I wonder ?

Ontario could claw back child-care benefit

Article



Some of Ontario's poorest families might never see the monthly child-care allowance proposed by the federal government.

The provincial government is expected to deduct the annual $1,200 child-care benefit for every child under age six directly from social assistance or disability support cheques.
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The $100 monthly allowance is intended to replace the current national child-care funding deal with provinces, but Wilkey and other advocates for low-income families worry the province will claw back the benefits.

The Ontario government already deducts the National Child Benefit Supplement from social assistance and disability cheques, despite a campaign promise to stop the clawback.


The truth is ....
The provincial government wants the money , and has no intention of giving it to the private citizens.

If the federal government doesn't give it to the provincial government , but instead opts to give it directly to the people , the provincial government will "claw back" the money and take it anyways... thus insuring the people get nothing.

The current premier of ontario is Dalton McGuinty. He is a member of the Liberal Party of Canada.

His web site is : http://www.premier.gov.on.ca/english/
His email address is Dalton.McGuinty@premier.gov.on.ca.


He is a provincial class RAT , obviously.

Change of Email

My friend a techy has his email server running , and my old email (whatshisname@rogers.com) got toasted by rogers.

On his server it's Ottawaboy@skokos.com , and that gets redirected to whatever my current email is, so if my ISP toasts it again I won't lose any email.

Sorry for the bother...

America Online vows to institute fee-based service despite protests

Article



Political group MoveOn.org Civic Action, the AFL-CIO labour union and other organizations have criticized the service, which will charge senders a fee to route their messages directly to AOL users' mailboxes without first passing through AOL junk mail filters.


Lemme get this straight.
You'r going to let spammers pay you to bypass your spam filters and dump their garbage into MY mailbox (assuming I actually had an aol account, which I don't)


AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc., contends the system will help it reduce spam because only legitimate senders of mass e-mail are likely to pony up the fee - ranging from 1/4 cent to one cent per message. But critics say the system will end up blocking many e-mails from groups that can't afford the fee.


But no one is saying "But I set the spam filter not to receive this junk and it's recieving it anyways !" etc etc etc ... in other words, the heck with you you weak powerless user we do as we please and if you don't like it go elsewhere.

I already did.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Feb 2 - 16 Hospital Visit

Jan 31
Havn't been eating for a few days, weak, but I had a doctors appointment with my doctor for today , so rather than go and spend 6+ hrs in emergancy to find out it's nothing I waited for the appointment and , feeling like crap , went to the doctor.

After a full out examination lasting a total of 30 seconds he proclaimed "We're going to admit you." And sent me down to emergancy. Well... not quite that fast. There was a perc bag hanging on my belly , slowly draining puss from an old abcess they'd put in long ago. The hose stuck in my belly had , after 8 or so months worked it's way to the surface and was now sticking out. He removed it and you know, I never realized how sharp the end of that hose was ? They really cut it so it was nice and pointy , probably so it could go in easy in the first place. No wonder I had so much trouble bending over every day ! I was stabbing myself with every movement !

Anyways , it was out, and I was off to emergancy to get admitted.

Not quite.

He admitted me for shortness of breath , thinking it was the pulmonary embolism I had before. Wanted a cat scan for it. Some doctor in emergancy noticed I was on Coumadin , to prevent a reoccurence, did an INR test and some other blood test to detect blood clotting and came to the conclusion that I couldn't possibly have an embolism. (To his credit he was right, My doctor was actually using that as an excuse to bypass the long line ups) . He would have written me a perscription , but since I was admitted by my doctor , my doctor had to write it.

they gave me a note to tell my doctor to write such and such a perscription, patted me on the head , and sent me home WITHOUT DOING A DAMB THING for me !

Next day phone my doctor. Oh , can't write a perscription without examining me. Earliest appointment was the day after.

Day after... (feb 2) go to him, and get the bums rush right back to emergancy. This time he took more time with me , kicked over a few tin cans or whatever it is they do when they go talk with other doctors, and this time around I got admitted. Oh , and the perscription ? My doctor tossed the note out , stating it wouldn't help me a bit.

Still...three days and no treatment ! sheesh !

Turns out my Crohns Disease had caused a blockage in my intestines somewhere , food wasn't moving , and of course I was slowly starving to death despite the fact that my belly was so full I couldn't put more food into it.

For a while they thought they might have to operate, but the matter eventually cleared up on it's own. Two weeks of hospital time felt like I was in jail though. You can only lie in bed staring at the ceiling for so long. Of course there was relief from the bordom. Like the time I snuck down to the cafeteria to eat a hamberger or two after they said I was allowed to eat again.
Spent two days throwing up after that. They were pissed, since they were about to release me and suddenly I was up chucking this black gunk from the bottom of my suddenly empty belly every two hours. And I was none too quiet about it either, you could hear me across half the floor when I got going.
They finally stuck a tube down my nose and into my belly and attached it to a vacuum pump , and I stopped ralphing up the gunk after that , ,though the container filled up pretty quick with black gunk. That was pretty desgusting. Anyone would throw up with that stuff in their belly. Of course, I probably should mention that when they stuck the tube in me ? It also was gross going down. They're not actually cutting anything , so it's not "pain" that you feel. But you're body definately doesn't like it, and I more or less freaked out going "ahhhh ahhhh ahhh !" waving my hands around and everything when they did it. 24hrs later I barely noticed the tube was there.

but that was nothing next to the unusual torture they call a "cathader" (sp?). What is a cathader you might ask ? (and I did ask , to the male nurse I had that day).

blah blah lots of medical terms blah blah measure out put of your bladder blah blah ... tube of some kind..blah blah...

Hmmm... tube , bladder. Now how would you get a tube into my bladder without a major operation ?
I looked at the male nurse. "You're going to stick a tube up my dick ?"
Yup. Thats what he was talking about.

A GUY STUCK A TUBE UP MY DICK !!!!
This was just about the ultimate indignity. Hurt like hell too.

The ultimate indignity came the next day when the cathader stopped working and I suddenly had this urge to go for a piss. Well, I got a tube up my dick , right ? I don't actually have to get up , I can just cut loose and it will go into the bag , right ?
Suddenly there was a fountain between my legs, and I quickly stopped that and called for the (male ) nurse. "Youre cathader is broken. " I informed him angrilly. Angrilly, because they hadn't put it in because something was broken, they'd put it in so they could '" more accurately measure" my output.
When it came it out it was quick , but painful. I only screamed once.

Lemme see. By my count , Guys have stuck hoses up my rear, up my dick , and up my nose in this past year. I'm just not a virgin anywhere anymore.