I do think Health Minister Kevin Falcon has a point in this little squib about how we're housing the homeless in $1000-a-day hospital beds. Yeah, that's a stupid and immensely costly way to do it, but the media would be all over the government if they were just kicking people out of those beds into homelessness rather than leaving them there for a few days in the hopes that a better option can be found.
So thanks for leaving them there, Kevin. But now let's figure out some housing and health supports so that they can get out of hospital sooner and into their own place for a fraction of that crazy cost. Better still, let's give them the support they need to not get sick in the first place.
The truth is that the cutbacks under this government and the Glen Clark New Democrats over the last 15 years have intensified poverty dramatically in B.C. It's showing up in all kinds of ways - including far too many people stuck in costly hospital beds. Not all of them are homeless - a shortage of long-term care beds in our communities is also stranding the frail elderly, the disabled and the brain-injured in those expensive hospital beds.
3 comments:
Homelessness is exaggerated by the peoples with developmental disabilities and/or mental health issues who successive governments have kicked to the curb.
These folks used to have a home - perhaps not the ideal home, but a roof none the less - and now they have to survive on the street.
"alternative level of care" indeed
Health Minister Kevin Falcon has gone nuts.
After dismantling a peer reviewed world class drug evaluation team the (dis)Honourable member is now asking joe lunchbucket to do drug evaluations?
http://www.health.gov.bc.ca/pharmacare/yourvoice/index.html
NUTS
In Ontario judges push back against hospitals turning away mentally ill offenders
Judges are starting to fight back over Ontario mental hospitals that close their doors to mentally ill offenders.
In a string of recent decisions, Toronto judges have ordered hospital officials to stop shunting unfit offenders to provincial jails where they cannot be properly treated.
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