Roundup: An easy way to close a loophole

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While Ontario continues to go full-steam ahead toward trying to divert more surgeries to private for-profit clinics (that bill the system), we need a reminder yet again that solutions exist within the existing system, using existing staff and personnel, if only they had the funding and support to do more. Dr. Warner here has a great example of how more can be done with existing facilities and staff that could have the same outcomes or better than these private clinics are purporting to offer.

Of course, that’s inconvenient for Ford, so I doubt he’s going to take this into account going forward. I also saw another news story yesterday about another clinic that is offering access to a nurse practitioner if you pay a monthly subscription fee, because there is a loophole that it exploits. Provincial governments could close this loophole immediately by declaring that visits to a nurse practitioner are billed to the system in the same way that visits to a doctor are—and provide said billing code—which would once again make it illegal to use this kind of loophole. We’ll see if they are committed to doing so with any haste, or if they’re content to accept more of this creeping privatisation because it serves their interests to do so.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces trying to capture Bakhmut are trying to encircle Ukrainian defenders, hoping to cut off their supply lines in the process. Ukrainians say they repelled over sixty attacks by Russians in the past week.

https://twitter.com/lyla_lilas/status/1629906366163742720

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau defended MP Han Dong’s loyalty to Canada and pushed back at the suggestion CSIS told him to rescind the nomination (CSIS doesn’t work like that).
  • Members of Dong’s riding association are also pushing back against the allegation that the nomination was orchestrated by the Chinese consulate.
  • At a Mississauga announcement on a new AstraZeneca plant with Doug Ford, Trudeau said he will ensure the Canada Health Act is respected.
  • TikTok is now banned on all federal government devices (as it should have been from the very start). Jagmeet Singh and Pierre Poilievre say they will take a hiatus.
  • Here is the saga of the infamous lobster tweet after Hurricane Fiona.
  • Only a small number of businesses who took pandemic loans have repaid them, and many are looking for a deadline extension.
  • Some 75 non-governmental organisations have written to Chrystia Freeland asking for more foreign aid funds in the next budget.
  • The Commons’ foreign affairs committee is in Europe to talk to officials about expanding NATO.
  • Alberta has now signed onto the new federal health transfers, while Nunavut’s premier says they need an updated offer before they sign on.
  • Kevin Carmichael puts the pieces together with our grocery oligopolies, the dulled sense of competition, and why they allowed inflation to rise as high as they did.
  • Adam Chapnick walks through why the reporting around CSIS counselling the Liberals to rescind Dong’s nomination don’t make any sense.
  • Justin Ling sees connections between the rise in anxiety levels across the western world and the embrace of more conspiracy theories as a result.
  • Paul Wells offers some thoughts as to why the Liberals may not want a public inquiry into the election interference, and about Poilievre’s evasiveness.

Odds and ends:

My Loonie Politics Quick Take gets a sense of what kinds of strings the federal government plans to attach to the new health transfers.

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: An easy way to close a loophole”

  1. Dale I really like your comments on closing loopholes in existing health care system. There is a political will by Conservative premiers to privatize our system. This must be stopped, but hard when provincial jurisdiction.

  2. So Robert Fife has anxiety about something and that’s why he’s devolved into a conspiracy theorist?

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