Kudos to Mickie Sexsmith on the letter to the editor Make health care an election issue. Except, let’s make it the issue.
Canada can no longer afford to be the magnanimous peacekeeper of yesteryear.
The cost of sending peacekeepers and policing forces overseas to engage in hostilities that will never end is unsustainable.
These expenses, along with the millions Canada has sent, and is sending as relief aid to other countries, should be redirected to our own collapsed health care system.
Canada is about to suffer its own disaster.
A health care tsunami this way cometh, and it seems that only those of us who are directly immersed in the health care process realize just how bad it really is.
The first waves are already here. Diabetes, dementia and heart and stroke disease, and other non-acute illnesses, already take up beds that should be reserved for acute care patients.
Our own Vernon Jubilee Hospital has at least 30 beds that are being used for non-acute care patients who are waiting for months to be placed in the existing local residential care facilities.
Someone has to die, leave the vicinity or be moved to palliative care for a vacancy to occur.
Successive federal and provincial governments have underfunded this crucial segment of the Canadian way of life for decades.
Government spin-doctors try to refocus the attention on to family caregivers, they attempt to tell us they are trying to prevent us from becoming secondary victims of these diseases.
“Look after yourself,” is their battle cry.
While there is some validity to this diversion, the actual victims of these diseases languish in hospital beds meant for others.
The reality is that pamphlets and seminars are cheaper than building new facilities and training and paying the staff to run them.
Politicians, wake up. It’s time to put Canadians first.
Ian MacLeod
Vernon
