Gutting rural health care (Feb. 19)

Let’s redefine 'emergency'

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            I know it was an unfair – though accurate – thing to say, but on the evening of the last provincial election in which the Tories won a minority government I said to my wife: “There goes Perth hospital”.

            And so it may come to pass. Tory governments and Horizon Health have been wanting to close Hotel Dieu for many many years. Are they going to succeed this time?

            First of all, their idea that medical emergencies only occur in the daytime is a logical way of looking at the whole thing I suppose, if you live in the shadow of a city hospital, but common sense (I do not refer to government) says that quite a few people go out on these things called snowmobiles which tend to become embedded in fir trees at 4:00 am. It is rarely a fair fight.

            Horizon Health managed quite a few years ago to close Perth hospital’s two state-of-the-art operating rooms and quickly whisked all their high-tech equipment down south where another Tory government had built a large hospital out in a potato field. At that point Bath Hospital bit the dust but Perth-Andover voices were quickly raised in support of our hospital.

            How I remember the Horizon Health executive who, after the 2012 flood, gleefully reported that Perth hospital would never recover from the devastation and would almost certainly be closed now. “It’s only a 40-minute drive to Waterville hospital” she said, thereby breaking Commandment #11B: “Thou shalt not lie like a cheap rug when people’s lives are at stake”.

            But it wasn’t yet the time for the greatly exaggerated demise. Hotel Dieu would be back. Horizon Health was frustrated once again. If they had had their way the ER would be gone forever, replaced, perhaps, by a custodian standing by the front door and handing out Band-Aids to repair broken legs and knife wounds such as those suffered by the bus driver who is alive today because Perth ER was only four minutes away.

            We all know someone who would be pushing up daisies if not for that ER. Someone very near and dear to my own heart had to be taken from this house at 1:00 am on Dec. 23. He had suffered a broken back and I doubt if he preferred to ride to Waterville (45-55 minutes from here) instead of Perth (15-20 minutes).

            The government’s first phase would have seen Perth ER and five more around the province close from midnight to 8:00 am, but that was just to soften us up for the next phases. ERs would, soon after, close for the night at 10:00 pm. Meanwhile the ambulance system can hardly deal with the way things are now.

            We know the reason for much of this, don’t we? It’s yet another hit on rural New Brunswick. Government and other bureaucrats sit around big curved tables and ponder how they can sock it to us yet again. This particular ‘reform’ must have taken them several minutes, because we know that Horizon Health had the plans all made months – perhaps years ago. Every year as flood season approaches they are saying: “Now? Now?” But with this government plan they won’t have to ask that question, or so they think.

            And what about the premier’s role in this? He sounds eager to call an election on the issue, but in the end sounds like Donald Trump bragging that he’s done nothing wrong. And speaking of Donald Trump (the only president who could possible have made George W. Bush look good), this whole ‘reform’ plan (they always call it ‘reform’ rather than what it is), looks like something he would do. Make it sound innocuous at first, then pile on the bad news.

            “An old-fashioned winter” with lots of snow is what we’re having at the moment, and it seems like a good time for an old-fashioned brawl. It’s time this government learned that people who live in rural areas deserve health care too. It is true that our province’s health care system does need a good close look, but they are looking at the wrong send of the boa constrictor.

            I would recommend the first step be to execute all the Horizon Health upper crust as well as those civil servants who seem to have their brains scrambled when they talk about health care. Wait! I didn’t mean stand them up against a wall and blast them because, as Nixon said he said: “That would be wrong.” (He didn’t actually say that.)

            Talking recently to a friend who spent two weeks in Edmundston hospital (not one to be cut), I was interested to hear that during his fortnight stay there, he hardly encountered a person who spoke English to him. Rather than taking this opportunity to rail against the other –lingual of bilingual, he said he had received excellent care and the staff had been second to none. Perhaps those who froth and drool and want every ambulance worker to be Jean-Paul Sartre or Alice Munroe in their use of both languages should consider this.

            NOTE: As of Sunday evening, I have heard that the government has cancelled the health care ‘reforms’. Did the government fall, or did their faces fall when they saw the public reaction? Now how about if we and they all get to work and come up with ideas to actually reform the health care system instead of hammering the rural hospitals?
                                                 -end-