LIE-berals are inbred creatures with minds full of fatty gravy- why do they not die young?
Now consider this quite detailed examination of the disgraceful drug "deal" Wynne-bag LIE-berals are offering us;
Here is an article explaining the ruinous cost of those wonderful Ontari-owe LIE-beral “freebies” they are offering on hope of buying the June 2018 election. With some comments of my own in brackets):
Liberals OHIP+ prescription drug election plan needs 911
By James Wallace. Published: January 14, 2018. Updated: January 14, 2018 8:27 AM EST
Filed Under: Toronto SUN/ Opinion/ Columnists
The Ontario Liberals “free” OHIP+ prescription drug plan for children and youth, it turns out, is yet another political con from a government notorious for disastrous, costly and outrageously self-serving public policy.
(Bait and switch is the sworn motto of LIE-berals everywhere!)
Con as in to scam, hustle, bamboozle, misdirect, dupe and otherwise hoodwink the public into thinking they’re getting a new, valuable and efficient public service that addresses broad societal inequity and “fairness,” which is Premier Kathleen Wynne’s favourite new word.
But like all too-good-to-be-true offers, their OHIP+ drug plan comes with a multitude of holes, flaws and catches and the inequity the plan purports to address – in particular that 1.2 million Ontario children and youth under 24 lack drug coverage – has been callously ignored by the Liberals for the past 14 years until they found themselves, unpopular and scandal-ridden, on the eve of an election.
“OHIP+ represents the biggest expansion of Medicare in Ontario in more than a generation,” Wynne said after her government unveiled the program in its spring budget.
As a campaign policy, OHIP+ has the veneer of a winner. Closer inspection however suggests a cynically crafted, pop-up drug benefits program likely to:
– Cost at least $1 billion annually- more than double projected costs;
(What? LIE-berals over budget YET AGAIN? Yawn!)
– Hand millions of dollars in taxpayers money to insurance companies and businesses;
(After all those insurance companies have stock owners who are largely civil service union Hogs and they NEED LOTS OF GRAVY! How better to provide that gravy than to offer publicly funded drug schemes that companies can LOOT?)
– Run into trouble in June when the election is over and insurance companies stop propping it up;
– Create a growing, bureaucratic burden for users that is already causing controversy over how families apply for benefits, and what drugs get covered.
(LIE-berals promised they would create good jobs- they just neglected to mention that ALL the jobs would depend totally on borrowed money!)
Conservative health critic Jeff Yurek, a pharmacist from St. Thomas, said there’s little question OHIP+ was designed to buy “popularity and votes.”
“Kathleen Wynne is only doing what’s in the best interests of Kathleen Wynne and the Liberal Party of Ontario,” he said.
What it fails to do, Yurek suggests, is address coverage problems faced by many Ontarians who need help.
That is the most galling aspect of the Liberal plan, their claim OHIP+ is the “right thing to do” and is intended to help vulnerable populations – especially the 1.2 million children and youth under 25 without drug benefits.
Last time we checked, the Liberals were first elected in 2003 and have had almost a decade-and-a-half to come up with a drug plan to help vulnerable youth.
They didn’t.
Worse, under their watch only 29% of the most vulnerable youth, those on social assistance and other government income supports, are actually enrolled in existing public plans that provide government-funded drug benefits.
Here are the facts, as provided by the Conference Board of Canada.
There are 4,036,200 children and youth in Ontario under 25 according to the Conference Board report the government relies upon.
Slightly more than half - 52% or 2.1 million young people are/were covered by private drug plans before OHIP+ kicked in Jan. 1.
Then there are 1.2 million youth not covered by plans.
Another 751,000 are eligible for coverage through public plans but, under the Liberals, just 218,000 were enrolled prior to OHIP+ through the Ontario Disability Support Program, Ontario Works, Home Care and Trillium Drug Program.
Following the unveiling of OHIP+, Wynne said: “Young people who are trying to get a strong start in life need our support — access to free prescription medication will make life more affordable for them when they need it most.”
Where have she and the Liberals been?
The government knew or ought to have known at-risk youth were not fully participating in the program but never bothered addressing the matter.
(AS I have said- bait and switch is part of LIE-beral DNA! One has only to look at the $100 million dollars in re-training money offered to Cdn auto workers in 2008- with so many strings attached to the money that only 5 percent was ever used! LIE-berals LOVE the grand gesture- that costs them NOTHING!)
They might have helped kids living in high-needs social housing projects or otherwise marginalized by ensuring they were actually enrolled in government drug benefits programs. They might have offered meaningful tax breaks, incentives or funding to working poor families who had no plan.
Instead, the Liberals decided to cover drug costs for 2.1 million young Ontarians already insured through plans commonly negotiated between employers and unions or provided to post-secondary students.
(LIE-berals do not recognize people in the private sector who do not have union membership- such people are trespassers in LIE-beral Ontari-owe!)
In other words, those who didn’t necessarily need OHIP+.
And in place of private drug plans with defined benefits that typically cover 12,000 to 14,000 drugs, the Liberals are offering an inferior plan covering 4,400 drugs.
(Just MORE bait and switch- to control costs- LIE-berals need the gravy for themselves and their Hog allies!)
The government will decide on a case-by-case basis whether it will cover the other 10,000-odd drugs through its existing Exceptional Access Program (EAP).
(And your “case” will be decided on its merits- how useful you are to LIE-erals and whether you are suitably photogenic for LIE-beral advertising!)
To avoid short-term chaos, the Liberals struck a deal with the insurance industry to prop up OHIP+ until June, coincidentally election time.
Until then, young patients will use their OHIP cards to pay for 4,400 commonly used drugs such as antibiotics and asthma puffers and the insurance industry will cover bills from the additional 10,000 their benefits plans currently cover.
However, instead of writing a prescription and handing it to their patients, doctors now and in future will need to fill out a form to apply for coverage for less-commonly used drugs.
(|Oh- MORE work for doctors who are already forced to ration health care- want to bet Docs charge a FEE to fill in your drug form- the one which may not be honoured by the time LIE-berals get around to deciding “cases” on that individual basis! Doctors may be left holding the bag- thanks to LIE-berals not appreciating doctors explaining to an angry public just what is wrong with Ontari-owe Care that LIE-berals are starving of funds even as patient numbers rise! Doctors and nurses are expected to do more with less- in sharp contrast to all other govt services!)
“Starting on July 1, 2018, individuals will be required to have their prescriber submit a request for all EAP drugs, including transition drugs,” the Health Ministry explained in response to a question from the Sun.
Meanwhile, the cost of OHIP+ appears grossly underestimated.
The Health Ministry estimates January to June costs will be $115 million, and notes some 220,000 youth – a mix of those with and without plans – have already used OHIP+.
Annually, the government insists the cost of OHIP+ will be a lean $465 million.
However, earlier this month TVO’s Steve Paikin uncovered more realistic numbers during an interview with Helen Stevenson, a former assistant deputy ministry of health under the Liberals who oversaw Ontario’s $4 billion drug program.
(Uh oh- IT’S A FORMER LIE-BERAL exposing those crap numbers to Paikin! But we can bet that Wynne-bag will dismiss the truth anyway!)
Stevenson is the founder, president and CEO of the Reformulary Group, an independent company dedicated to formulary management.
Her company surveyed drug claims from 1.3 million Ontarians covered by private plans and found 344,788 were under 25, then calculated their annual drug costs.
It worked out to:
– $72.5 million for drugs expected to be covered by OHIP+;
– Another $20 million for drugs expected to be covered under the exceptional drug plan.
Extrapolating those figures for a population of 4 million under-25s, the Liberals should expect to pay $848 million for commonly used drugs and another $234 million for exceptional drug coverage.
That’s $1.08 billion annually, not the $465 million the Liberals insist OHIP+ will cost.
(OH well- we call them LIE-berals for a reason!)
A big chunk of that cash is money insurance companies and private companies will no longer have to shell out.
The Liberals say they assume insurance companies and employers will lower plan costs for workers but that won’t happen at least until 2019, if it does at all.
(HAHAHAHAHA!! Insurance companies lower plan costs? And you DID GET your 15 percent LIE-beral mandated reduction in auto insurance rates- right? Along with that FIFTY PERCENT reduction in accident benefits? What a BARGAIN! Especially since Ontarians are statistically the safest drivers in Canada- yet pay the highest rates thanks to LIE-beral “aid”!)
Private plans won’t disappear, which the government acknowledges, nor will all drugs currently covered by private plans necessarily be covered.
(No- private plans wont disappear- but civil service union medical costs will be reduced- allowing Hogs to put more of our cash into their solid gold pension funds! Its LIE-berals shifting costs for fun and PERSONAL profit!)
“If a drug is not currently funded through the ODB program, it will not be funded through OHIP+ and in this case a private insurer may continue to provide coverage, if applicable,” the ministry said.
(And there is the trouble- civil service union Hogs will continue to get that solid gold service the rest of us pay for but do NOT get to enjoy!)
That doesn’t mean OHIP+ won’t provide real help to families, particularly the 1.2 million without drug benefits.
The real question is whether OHIP+ is the best and most efficient way to do that.
Stories are already surfacing about families facing approval delays or having coverage stripped by OHIP+.
The Brantford Expositor reported mom Nicole Forbes was told the $800-a-month medication for obsessive compulsive disorder her sons were taking would no longer be covered by her insurance company, and had to fight to get the government’s EAP program to temporarily cover the cost.
(Bait and switch! Clearly at least one insurance company will NOT be passing on any cost savings to the public!)
Dr. Eric Benchimol at Children’s Hospital in Eastern Ontario told the London Free Press OHIP+ isn’t allowing doctors to increase dosages or frequency of costly drugs for Crohns and colitis without approval, something private plans permit, which is putting stress on the children, their health, their families and the nurses and medical professionals who care for them.
(LIE-berals already ration health care so why not ration the drugs as well? If your doctor thinks you need more drugs than LIE-beral are offering then YOU PAY!)
The Liberals, see few problems, perhaps beyond a singular need to get re-elected, and are gushing about OHIP+ publicly in taxpayer-funded TV ads.
WINDSOR, ON. DECEMBER 1, 2017. — Eric Hoskins, Provincial Minister of Health and Long-Term Care speaks at a press conference on Friday, December 1, 2017, at the Windsor Regional Hospital. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)
(And since Doc Hoskins subsequently gave up his Ontari-owe LIE-beral party card, it looks like he is not expecting great results for the drug plan come election time?)
“It’s exciting to see the significant impact that OHIP+ is making in the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people across Ontario,” Health Minister Eric Hoskins said in a release this week.
“By providing access to more than 4,400 prescription medications at no cost to all children and youth age 24 and under, we are removing the financial barriers that can prevent them from getting the essential care they need to stay healthy. It’s an important first step towards our vision of a universal pharmacare system for everyone in Ontario.”
And that vision is the problem.
OHIP+ is based on an ideological policy goal to create a universal, public Pharmacare program but is built on a flawed and underfunded patchwork of existing public programs.
Should Ontario voters decide universal Pharmacare is a desirable goal, the question should be how to get there efficiently and responsibly.
Andrea Horwath and the Ontario NDP propose to spend $475 million on a “Pharmacare for Everyone” program that would cover fewer drugs but be available for all the 2 million or so Ontarians who have no drug coverage today.
(It would be easier to deal with the 2 million people with no coverage if we scaled back the extravagant coverage offered to greedy Hogs!)
That makes a good deal of sense.
Patrick Brown and the Conservatives raised concerns about OHIP+ but have promised to keep, and fix it, if elected.
Yurek suggests they’ll “make it more efficient, reduce the administration and bureaucracy and red tape.”
“Whoever gets elected is going to have to address OHIP+,” he said.
That much is crystal clear.
Along with soaring Hydro prices and a broken electricity system, an increasingly dysfunctional and bureaucratic health care system that still hasn’t managed to get ehealth right, OHIP+ is poised to become yet another disaster left in the Liberal wake.
jawallace at postmedia.