Governments are hurting our health care

In response to the recent announcement about the dental-care program, it appears that the federal Liberals and NDP like to buy votes.

Isn’t that exactly what they did by making the alliance between them establishing the national dental-care program? Haven’t we had enough of federal and provincial mismanagement of our healthcare system so that now, we’d like to have them also mismanage and underfund the dental-care program?

All parties know we’re in a health-care crisis, and so what do they do but open the door for yet another underfunded and mismanaged government program. But it should bring in votes for them in the next election, don’t you think?

We constantly hear of professionals from other countries who are trying to come to Canada, and the horror stories that they tell about the unbelievable bureaucracy that they face and the delays and costs of becoming “qualified” in Canada.

One would think that many of these applicants could be brought on stream almost immediately in lower levels such as nursing assistants or nurse practitioners, which would aid them in finding employment, and help with the medical personnel shortages from nurses to doctors.

They could work to become qualified in their chosen profession as doctors, nurses and so on.

Unfortunately, our governments don’t seem to want to act quickly enough to try to alleviate some of the issues that are presenting themselves because they don’t want to lose votes. We need new eyes to see how to move forward and resolve some of these serious problems. If we don’t, nothing will change.

Ernie Kuemmel Oak Bay