I live in Canada for a reason. I've chosen not to move to the United States and make more money, buy burritos for $1 and sport the red, white and blue because I know the drawbacks - the U.S. health care system being my number one concern.
But living in British Columbia is getting more and more like living in the States.
Our health care system is being pieced apart and sold to the highest bidder. First cleaning staff, then food staff. Next we'll hear candy stripers aren't allowed to come and visit the sick because Corporation X from Arkansas holds the licence to do that and patients have to pay $10 an hour to be cheered up.
I see a future health care system that has the elderly waiting years for the heart surgery they need because there's only one doctor left at our hospital who's still covered by our deteriorating health care system. The wealthy will have first choice of which doctor they want to repair their fallen arches while the rest of us suffer in silence. Why are we silent?
I don't understand how so many people can sit around and wait for the health system to completely fall apart.
Our health care system, as it used to be, is something that is Canada to its very core. We are all about fair and equal treatment of all the people of this country, aren't we? That's one of the main things I think makes Canada what it is. We're seen as one of the best places to live in the world. We have people trying desperately to become Canadian citizens, to have the rights and privileges we were born into. Yet people in countries ridden with poverty and illness have more patriotism and gumption to stand up for what matters than we do.
I've driven by and honked my support at the picket lines outside St. Mary's Hospital, but that second of support is not nearly enough.
We need to write letters, lobby our government and demand that the health care system we once had be restored. I know women who had their babies at St. Mary's Hospital who ended up with staph infection because of the dirty conditions they were left in. A woman who has just given birth can't clean up the soiled bed sheets she has to lie in, and with cutbacks and privatization of cleaning staff, the quick clean-up care that used to be there is now gone.
But people aren't saying anything, at least not to government. I know this is a small town and we all seem to know what's going on within minutes of it happening, but our government doesn't know. Or maybe they know and choose to ignore it because there's no documented paperwork about this kind of thing piling up on their desks.
Pam Duffy, head of the Hospital Employee's Union on the Coast, is urging people to write to the paper, to the union and to the government about their personal experiences with our failing health care system, because she says nothing will change unless there is community outrage.
I'm asking you, why isn't there?
