Northern Light
Superstar
Without letting the current government off the hook in any way, under funding of healthcare in Ontario is not a recent phenomenon.
Significant wait times, above those recommended in medical guidelines have been an ongoing issue since the Harris years, and throughout the McGuinty and Wynne periods in office.
I'd hasten to add they almost certainly pre-dated Harris, although, likely not quite as bad, but we don't have very good data that far back on wait times.
We have also seen a continual reduction in hospital beds per capita, diagnostics per capita and other key areas of the system; along with a shortage of long-term care beds that has been steadily worsening for about 8 years now as the Baby Boomers have begun to age in to needing long-term care; and the requisite number of new beds have not been built.
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I will then go on to add, while there certainly is new money being thrown about; its not all going to address needs I listed above.
Its mostly focused, as it should be in the current crisis, on PPE, Ventilators, Beds, ICU Beds and the like.
That still leaves a host of other areas under-funded, and that assumes much of the crisis funding in base-lined in future years, something we don't know yet.
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