Diabetics’ troubles no big deal to Liberals
If the Trudeau Liberals want to see diabetes up close and personal, they should visit a hospital where the worst elements of this disease are front and centre. It will not be a pleasant tour. What they will see are a lot of wheelchairs, and people sitting in them who have had their feet lobbed off, and others sitting around them who are going blind.
They will see how poorly managed diabetes wreaks havoc.
When Finance Minister Bill Morneau set out to tax low-paid retail workers for the discounts they received on goods bought in their store, or lunches at the food court where they worked, it was difficult to imagine how much lower the Trudeau Liberals could go in search of nickels and dimes. But now we know. Since May, these Liberals, supposedly great advocates for the middle class but not so much for the more vulnerable, have been refusing a long-standing disability credit to Type 1 diabetics of a chintzy $1,500 a year to help them subsidize their fight against a disease that can cost sufferers upwards of $15,000 a year. It verges on heartlessness. I contracted Type 2 diabetes in my 40s, and it has since morphed into insulin dependency.
On each trip to my endocrinologist, I am warned about not maintaining control of my blood-glucose levels. My feet are checked for signs of nerve damage, ulcerating sores, and my eyes are checked every six months to see if any degeneration is beginning to creep in.
Every day, I check my blood-glucose levels a minimum of four times. Each test strip costs upwards of $2, and is not covered by provincial health insurance. But this bothers me not. I am not unemployed. I am not on a fixed income. I am not on disability and, not being Type 1, would never have qualified for the $1,500 tax credit.
But those who did qualify, and who have since seen this tax credit taken away by a spend-thrift government now resorting to penny pinching, are being looked upon by the Liberals as if they were a drain on the economy, and that their denial will be without consequences.
No one so vulnerable to so many complications from such a disease should be made victims by any government, let alone a supposedly progressive one.
According to Kimberley Hanson of Diabetes Canada, the Liberals gave no explanation for pulling the plug on this tax credit. They just yanked it. There is no possible justification for the Trudeau Liberals taking this tax credit off the books. It is a health-care saver, not a healthcare drain.
The costs associated with amputations, blindness and renal failure because of unmanaged diabetes far outweigh helping subsidize the test strips that evaluate bloodsugar levels.
No one wants to see feet leaving hospitals by the wheelbarrow-load, but, if you look close enough, it’s already happening. Unless the Liberals turn back on this, it will only get worse.