{"id":869,"date":"2007-09-20T20:05:50","date_gmt":"2007-09-21T01:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/blog\/?p=869"},"modified":"2007-09-20T20:05:50","modified_gmt":"2007-09-21T01:05:50","slug":"mcshifty-playing-a-shell-game-with-healthcare-and-gambling-with-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/?p=869","title":{"rendered":"McShifty Playing A Shell Game With Healthcare and Gambling With Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you have gone in for a blood test only to turn around after checking in to see 30 or 40 chairs all taken and a half dozen people standing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>If you know someone who has been waiting for 5 years for a hip or knee replacement while hobbling around on crutches or in a wheelchair at a reasonably young age only to get a new hip or knee after they have lost the physical strength to use it due to attrition&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>If you are angry that your tax dollars are being spent on providing drug users with 500 million free needles while diabetics have to pay for each and every insulin injection&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Then it&#8217;s time to get a new government in Ontario.<\/p>\n<p>Watch this.<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"425\" height=\"350\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/5l5IrTPXn2k\"><\/param><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/5l5IrTPXn2k\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>When I listened to the woman in the above video, it made me angry to be a resident in one of the richest parts of the free world.  How a 35 yr old can be shuffled through our health care system for four years to the point where she is now suffering from stage 4 cancer.<\/p>\n<p>I asked a very close confidant in the medical equipment industry about the ratio of PET scans in Quebec compared to Ontario and for any info she had on PET scans.  Her CT product manager gave her the following background:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Positron Emission Tomography \u2013 PET Scan<\/p>\n<p>A radioactive substance is injected into the body with \u201ctracer\u201d.  There are different types of \u201ctracers\u201d depending on which part of the body you want to scan.<\/p>\n<p>The person having the scan goes through two types of scans.  The first is a Gamma Camera \u2013 Nuclear medicine.  Then they go through a Computed Tomography (CT) Scan, (sometimes known as a CAT-scan).<\/p>\n<p>The image from the nuclear scan and the image from the CT scan are then put together and you get a very good image of what\u2019s happening in the body at the point where the tracer injection is.<\/p>\n<p>PET Scans are especially well known for Cancer because of the image quality.  Sometimes a CT scan alone won\u2019t find a problem if it\u2019s cancer in the earliest stages.<\/p>\n<p>He also said that PETS aren\u2019t  readily available yet anywhere.  He said he thinks there\u2019s one at Sick Kids in Toronto, but isn\u2019t sure where there are others.<\/p>\n<p>Another contact said that the difference in numbers between Quebec and Ontario are very accurate.   Apparently, though, the Quebec government found that too many PET scans were being done indiscriminately and they don\u2019t fund the purchase of PET scanners to hospitals.   What\u2019s happening is that Radiologists are getting the money together and opening clinics NEXT to the hospitals and doing the PET scans at their clinics.  PET scans are not covered by RAMQ (Quebec\u2019s version of OHIP).<\/p>\n<p>Getting a PET scan in Quebec costs about $2500.<\/p>\n<p>So, the answer is yes, they are doing the scans in Quebec, but people are paying for the scan themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So let&#8217;s do some math.<\/p>\n<p>Dalton McShifty and the Liberals Health Premium &#8211; $800 per year<br \/>\nAverage age of marriage to retirement &#8211; 30 to 65 or 35 years<br \/>\nTotal Health Care Premium paid by an average family &#8211; $28,000<br \/>\nCost of a PET scan &#8211; $2500<br \/>\nNumber of PET Scans the average family could pay for on their own &#8211; 11.2<\/p>\n<p>Now let&#8217;s look at some other numbers<\/p>\n<p>Amount of money the Ontario cricket club asked for &#8211; $150,000<br \/>\nAmount of money the Ontario Liberals gave them without any authorization &#8211; $1,000,000<br \/>\nOverfunding? &#8211; $850,000<br \/>\nThe number of health care premiums the overfunding would have paid for &#8211; 1062<\/p>\n<p>Thats 1062 families worth of health care premiums Dalton McShifty just tossed out the window after telling you he needed it to pay for health care.<\/p>\n<p>How many more lies are we going to give him the chance to tell?  How much more hard earned tax dollars are we going to let him squander?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you have gone in for a blood test only to turn around after checking in to see 30 or 40 chairs all taken and a half dozen people standing&#8230; If you know someone who has been waiting for 5 years for a hip or knee replacement while hobbling around on crutches or in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,39,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthcare","category-numbers-dont-lie","category-politics-provincial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/officiallyscrewed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}