Nothing but music this week, so no podcast, no bonus footage, no image gallery. Just music. Two hours worth! And it’s our SOCAN ratings week, which means that any musicians played today will receive oodles of royalties (for extremely low values of “oodles”). To maximize this economic windfall for Waterloo Region, most of the music is KWCon.
Radio Waterloo is having its On-Air Funding Drive for 2022, so Bob Jonkman makes a pitch for donations and plays new KWCon music by artists from Waterloo Region and the surrounding area.
Bob empties the last of the KWCon from his inbox to play all the latest new, local music. Also, Bob introduces Season three of She Is Your Neighbour
If you’re a local artist and want to have your work on the radio (music, poetry, short (or long) stories, comedy, radio theatre, &c) check out How To Submit Music and contact us at office@radiowaterloo.ca.
Today we have nothing but KWCon music — music by musicians from Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, Wilmot, Wellesley, Woolwich, and North Dumfries. All recent releases, too!
If you’re a Waterloo Region musician and want to get your music on the radio check out How To Submit Music and we’ll add it to our library!
Barbara Schumacher and Jim Stewart of the Waterloo Region Health Coalition join Bob Jonkman on a web conference to talk about the Ontario government’s creeping advances to privatized health care, the diminishing level of health care in Ontario compared to other provinces, ideas to improve public health care, the effects of having private hospitals, and an announcement of the upcoming Waterloo Region Health care Privatization Summit.
We had some technical difficulties during the live broadcast, but the podcast cleaned up nicely, although the web conference created some dropout in the audio at some points.
Introductions: Barbara Schumacher is a retired physician and the former Medical Director of the University of Waterloo Health Service; Jim Stewart is the chair of the Waterloo Region Health Coalition. WRHC is a chapter of the Ontario Health Coalition, a non-partisan public watchdog for health care. Provincial legislation is introducing privatization of health care by stealth; result of insufficient funding for the health care system. Canadian Doctors for Medicare has done studies of the administration of private health care: Canadian public health has half the administrative cost of private health care.
13m37s
Ontario is dead last among the provinces in funding public health care: fewest hospital beds, fewest nurses, and funding hospitals at the lowest rate of any province. We need to look for ways to invest in public health, not take funds out and drive them into profit-driven “Independent Health Facilities”. Federal health care transfer payments have dropped from 50% to 20%. There is a massive reduction in provincial health care spending. Federal government transfer payments are intended to administer a provincial health care system, not deliver health care. In 2019 the Ontario People’s Health Care Act created a super agency with powers to restructure the public health care system, now there is a patchwork across the province, different in Waterloo Region from Windsor, Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, Sudbury.
17m14s
How to make things better? Focus on public health care, we paid for this over decades, why throw it out? Comparing England, where NHS privatized, but the private company went bankrupt and left. How sustainable are private companies for delivering health care. But Scotland’s NHS rejected privatization and focused on public infrastructure and create a strategy for sustainability for the NHS in Scotland. As a result, Scotland is a world leader in reducing wait times, reduction of hospital acquired infections, and reducing re-admission rates. They used four strategies: 1) Redesign and transform capacity on population-based requirements; 2) Information (linked electronic health records); 3) Planning strategy, including continuous quality improvement; 4) Peformance Management Strategy, holding regional health units accountable when they don’t reach targets. Canadian Doctors for Medicare has a lot of studies on how our Canadian health care system can be reformed. Private health care is not the only alternative. Private clinics primarily focus on profit, that’s what they’re designed to do.
25m00s
On 1 February 2022 the Ontario Health Minister, Christine Elliot, gave a press conference where she said “Let independent health facilities create private hospitals.” This is an alarming announcement, it speaks to the complete coring out of our public hospitals, having them recall diagnostic and surgical services, to be reconstituted in private clinics. In private hospitals the simple procedures and uncomplicated patients get drawn in the private system, then the public hospitals are left with the more expensive cases requiring more intense professional care, so public hospitals have expenses that far exceed those of private hospitals. Private hospitals also pull professional expertise out of the public system, but since there will be no additional doctors it leaves public hospitals with fewer resources. Private hospitals only benefit people who can afford it; poor people will go to underfunded, understaffed public hospitals. Public hospitals have a flat-fee system to compensate doctors; all neurologists or all obstetricians are paid the same. In a private system there can be a differential fee scale according to expertise. The public system doesn’t reinforce holding on to quality, we see physicians with specialized skills move to the US, draining the public care system. But some Canadian physicians find the private system in the US burdensome (health insurance costs, tracking down overdue payments, take orders from health insurance corporations) so their ability to deliver high-quality health care is diminished significantly, and they return to Canada.
30m33s
WRHC is trying to warn the Region of Waterloo what is happening with privatization. They are holding an emergency summit on Tuesday, 5 April 2022, at 7:00pm register with Zoom. Speakers include Natalie Mehra, Executive Director of the Ontario Health Coalition. Find out what’s happening so people can make a decision a the voting booth in June.
31m48s
Discussing the politics of health care. WRHC is non-partisan, but there’s no need to have a political affiliation, almost all parties support the public health care system. It’s not a political position, it’s a social position. Discussing the scope of health care delivery: Eye care, hearing care, dental care, pharmacare, and mental health care. “Health care above the neck.” Pharmacare on a large scale gets better competitive pricing, but the strong Pharma lobby is holding us back.
36m16s
Jim Stewart gives the WRHC contact info and Bob gives the credits as Extended Heatwarning plays out to the end of the podcast.