Province Announces Health Care Plan

Ontario’s Liberal government will give more power to
local health agencies as it looks to overhaul the health system to
lower costs.
Health Minister Deb Matthews says local health integration
networks, or LHINs, which administer funding to hospitals and
co-ordinate care in each region, will be given responsibility for
family doctors.
Matthews says the LHINs will help ensure patients have what she
says will be a more seamless experience between doctor and hospital.
Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak calls LHINs a waste of
taxpayers’ money that take funding out of front-line health care to
feather the nests of well-paid bureaucrats.
Hudak says people in Grimsby have waited more than a decade for a
promised hospital but instead got what he calls “a shiny new office
for LHIN bureaucrats.”
Matthews says the province will also try to have more routine
procedures performed at specialized, not-for-profit clinics instead
of in hospitals to help save money.