PCs want to privatize hip, knee surgeries: NDP
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/04/2018 (2171 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister refused Wednesday to address accusations from NDP Leader Wab Kinew that the Tories are planning to allow private surgery for hip and knee replacements and cataracts.
Kinew made the charges during question period, telling Pallister a report released April 12 by the Canadian Institute for Health Information cited a drop in the number of Manitobans receiving hip or knee replacements within the recommended six months.
(In 2017, 53 per cent of Manitobans got hip replacement surgery within the recommended time frame, compared with 69 per cent in 2015. For knee replacements, 43 per cent had surgery within six months in 2017, down from 64 per cent in 2015.)
“These numbers had been moving in a positive direction prior to this government taking office (in 2016),” Kinew said.
Reminding the house the recent wait-times reduction task force had recommended private services be used to catch up with the province’s demand for surgery, Kinew challenged Pallister: “Does the premier plan to privatize hip and knee and cataract surgery, here in our province?”
Pallister didn’t answer and didn’t speak with media after question period. (An aide to Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said later the government is not considering such private services, but gave no further details.)
Pallister fired right back at Kinew, accusing the NDP leader of hoping for news that’s as bad as possible so Kinew can blame the government. Last week, the premier said, Kinew was hoping for Manitoba Hydro rates to soar.
“The member seems to be cheering for the worst results,” Pallister said. “No, the sky is not falling, even though the member may wish it.”
It could be fear or it could be partisanship, said Pallister, claiming Kinew was disappointed a report released Tuesday by the Winnipeg Regional Hospital Authority (WRHA) showed year-to-year overall wait times are down.
Meanwhile, the personal attacks got nasty as Pallister again rejected NDP demands the province open a safe-injection site in Winnipeg to help deal with the opioid crisis.
Pallister said MLA Nahanni Fontaine had worked for a decade for the former NDP government as special adviser to cabinet on Indigenous women’s issues, and there’s no evidence she ever did anything.
As the debate over the issues of safe-injection sites drew in Justice Minister Heather Stefanson and Goertzen, New Democrat MLA Andrew Swan told the house: “The premier and the justice minister are making light of something that is killing Manitobans.”
Goertzen said the province has been increasing training and availability of naloxone as an antidote to opioid overdoses, and is pursuing other solutions that meet the needs of the most people possible. In 17 years in government, the NDP didn’t promote the use of naloxone, the health minister said.
Goertzen said Kinew was basing his support of a supervised drug-injection site on a report Tuesday from the Canadian Mental Health Association, which also called for the decriminalization of some illegal drugs.
Noting Swan is a former attorney general, Goertzen demanded Swan tell the house if he agrees with Kinew that heroin and cocaine should be decriminalized.
“He didn’t answer in government, either,” Goertzen scoffed.
nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca