October 16, 2024
No quick fix for hallway medicine
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It’s unrealistic to expect the Ford government to solve within two years, a decades-old problem it inherited from the previous Liberal government, in power for 15 years.
It’s unrealistic to expect the Ford government to solve within two years, a decades-old problem it inherited from the previous Liberal government, in power for 15 years.

Health Minister Christine Elliott made the best of a difficult situation Monday when she said Premier Doug Ford’s pledge to end hallway medicine in Ontario within a year was Ford “expressing the wishes that we all have.”

Except that’s not what the premier said at the wind-up to the annual premiers’ meeting in Saskatoon last week.

He said: “When we got elected, there were people in hallways across our province waiting to see a doctor for five hours. As we stand right now, we’re down to 1,000 patients in the hallways, but I can assure the people of Ontario, over the next year, we won’t have anyone in the hallways there.”

For Elliott to walk that absolute declaration back to Ford expressing a “wish”, reminds us of former Ontario Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne explaining her broken election promise to reduce auto insurance rates by 15% as a “stretch goal”.

The problem of hallway medicine has existed for decades. The solutions aren’t simple.

The Ford government knows this from a report earlier this year by Dr. Rueben Devlin, chair of the premier’s council on improving health care and ending hallway medicine.

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See Also:

(1) PCs making community housing a priority

(2) Cuts to Legal Aid Ontario will cause hearing delays, Immigration and Refugee Board warns

Meaningless News (Nobody Cares):

(3) Poll suggests two thirds of Ontarians do not believe Doug Ford cares about people like them

(4) Andrew Scheer will have a hard time shaking Doug Ford. He’d better get started

(5) The people in the cronyism scandal that has rocked Premier Doug Ford’s government

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