Media, The Economy

To Omit Information is to Misinform

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I caught a flashy ad promoting Shaw’s 5:30 PM Global National program. The ad had clips from a story about an Ontario woman being denied medical treatment by the Ontario government, telling viewers to tune into Global National for the full story.

The ad really didn’t provide me any incentive to tune into Global National since anyone familiar with today’s media knows the probable form and content of the story. More importantly, they know what type of information the story needs to include but won’t include.

From the ad it was clear the subject of the story has a terminal illness; a terminal illness with a high probably of being among those illnesses classified as a ‘rare disease’; meaning treatment will be new (perhaps still in the experimental stage or in clinical trials) and extremely expensive.

With evident grief family and friends will speak of what a wonderful person she is, how terrible her loss would be, how sad/devastating the thought of her death is to them and how outraged they are the villains, the Ontario Government, refuses to pay for the treatment.

If there are children, there will be film of her great relationship with her children; of her looking ill and limited by the disease while the children look concerned and upset. There will be testimony of what a great and loving mother she is. She will speak of how she wants to live so she can “see her children grow-up”. The children will speak of how much they love their mother and how they do not want the villainous government people to make her die.

If the family has a dog (pet) there will be pictures of the woman and dog enjoying a wonderful relationship and testimony as to how it will devastate the dog is she dies.

The report will provide the name of the disease, how it slowly sucks away the life of the person with the disease and how there is a cure (or an on occasion successful treatment) but the government will not cover the cost – a cost the family cannot afford to pay itself.

There will be interviews with the villains, the Ontario Government officials who state that the Ontario government does not cover (pay for) experimental treatments.

The tone of the piece may evoke enough of a negative response that the Ontario Government, because it is all about politics, is forced to pay for the treatment.

Should the government be forced to pay for the non-covered experimental treatment, the tone of the report will be self congratulatory.

The information the report won’t include is who died or went without treatment because Global National caused the life of the woman in the story to be deemed more important than the lives of other Ontario citizens.

Healthcare is a zero sum game. When money is spent on something/someone not in the budget (the woman’s treatment) the money to pay for the unbudgeted spending is taken from somewhere/something/someone that money was budgeted for. The reallocation of the money to pay for the unbudgeted healthcare expense means someone does not receive the services that were originally (before reallocation) going to be received.

The same political reasons/pressures that result in money being ‘reallocated’, make the powerless, the unpopular, those unable to speak for themselves those most like to lose services.

Reallocation of resources has left the psych ward at Abbotsford Hospital overwhelmed. I knew someone who was on the waiting list to get into treatment for his substance abuse. As a result of this ongoing struggle his head was in a black and dangerous space. Recognizing how dark and dangerous his head space was we spoke of his need to go to the hospital if it worsened.

It did, he went to the overtaxed, overwhelmed hospital and was turned away. Upon leaving the hospital he killed himself.

Cutting healthcare does not require (or mean) cutting the dollars spent on healthcare. Healthcare costs continue to rise and unless the percentage increase in the budget matches the percentage increase in the cost to buy the same healthcare services as last year – you cannot buy the same health services as last year. Meaning health services have been cut.

As a consequence any ‘NEW’ services come at the expense of existing services – cutbacks or eliminations of those existing services providing the $$$$ to pay for the ‘NEW’ services.

I am not sure whether it is a result of ‘burying your head in the sand’ or ‘wilful denial’ or ‘refusing to think’ but people act as though they can have unlimited healthcare – without paying for it. Using “The government can find the money – if they want to” mantra. Ignoring that common sense and basic mathematics require  the government have an orchard of money trees behind the legislature or Rumpelstiltskin in the basement of the legislature (parliament) spinning straw into gold to pay for all the healthcare people want but refuse to pay for.

Politicians – the government – are not villains for imposing limits on health care that have negative consequences, up to and including death, for citizens. Their villainy lies in protecting their jobs (re-election) and gold-plated retirement benefits at the expense of citizen’s healthcare and standard of living by refusing to tell voters something voters do not want to hear.

Refusing to address the issues voters don’t want to hear about does not mean the issues won’t be addressed at some point. It merely postpones the very painful consequences until government and citizens are forced, in the same manner as was Greece, to deal with the issues arising from economic and financial realities.

Telling ourselves that ‘Canada is not Greece’ will not stop the consequences of our spend, spend, spend, pay only a portion, borrow, borrow, sell the future of Canadian children – from coming home to roost or change how painful the correction of personal, corporate and government financial mismanagement will be

In running around broadcasting reports about the need for new hospitals, more healthcare, more education, more of this more, more of that……… without asking how we pay for those items; fostering the impression that the financial and economic issues looming over the future of citizens are the fault of government and have nothing to do with unreasonable demands from the public for services they refuse to pay for; not asking either Mr. Vander Zalm or Mr. Dix why they thought sending $1.5 billion back to Ottawa was a better idea than spending at least a billion dollars of that amount on hospital infrastructure; completely ignoring the financial and economic challenges facing governments………

……media has become villains in this drama, a significant part of the problem, a major impediment to addressing the issues and a threat to Canadians standard of living.

The motto of the media has changed from “all the news you need to know” to today’s “only the news you want to hear, and nothing you don’t want to hear.”

Media is all about selling the sizzle and ignoring the fact the meat is full of salmonella and/or e-coli.

Caveat emptor, Finances, Life, Provincial

Motivation: an Evaluation Tool

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There is nothing we can do about the majority of British Columbians having voted to repeal the HST and return to a PST, except suffer the pain and pay the price.

That Bill Vander Zalm, Adrian Dix, the NDP, the media and the majority of BC residents decided it was a good idea to send $1.5 billion back to Ottawa, instead of using it to construct hospitals and other needed infrastructure, is a triumph of motive over rational, thoughtful decision making.

Leaving us to decide “how important is it” that we start construction to replace/renew St. Paul’s Hospital, Royal Inland Hospital, Haida Gwaii Hospital and any other capital projects before the five years (at $300 million a year) of repayment to Ottawa are up.

If it is decided that we cannot wait the remaining 4 years of repayments to begin construction of hospitals or other capital projects, then taxpayers are going to have to suffer the pain of paying the hundreds of millions of dollars of additional taxes needed to offset the $1.5 billion returned to Ottawa.

As stated there is nothing we can do about the return of the PST on April Fool’s Day but endure the consequences.

But with Election Day on May 14, 2013 only weeks away, it behoves us to seek to understand why the majority of British Columbians decided removing $1.5 billion from the BC budget and returning all those dollars to Ottawa was a good idea.

Because with the challenges facing healthcare, education, the economy, indeed the future of British Columbian’s standard of living – we cannot afford such large scale misinformation or foolishness.

Voters must set aside wilful denial, face the need to set priorities, make tough choices and recognize we cannot have unlimited healthcare or other government services UNLESS WE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR UNILIMTED LEVELS OF SERVICE.

The complexity, lack of easy answers and the importance of beginning to address the issues demanding BC voters set priorities, make it imperative that voters are informed about and understand the actual state of BC’s finances and the ability of those finances to purchase and deliver services (i.e. healthcare) to citizens.

Wise decision making requires the facts, not rhetoric or spin or false ‘knowing’.

Throughout his HST crusade Mr. Vander Zalm ducked questions as to the $1.5 billion repayment to Ottawa or suggested it would not have to be repaid, even though Ottawa had stated if the HST was repealed the money paid to BC to bring in the HST would – not surprisingly – have to be repaid.

That $1.5 billion repayment is – not surprisingly – resulting in painful negative consequences for the citizens of BC. If Mr. Vander Zalm’s crusade had been about the HST and concerned with the best interests of the citizens of BC addressing the $1.5 billion repayment would have been part of Mr. Vander Zalm’s crusade.

If Vander Zalm’s motivation was not the HST or the best interests of the citizen’s of BC, what could his motivation for his anti-HST (let’s repay Ottawa $1.5 billion) crusade have been?

Given that the existence of the BC Liberals offered an alternative for voters to the Social Credit and thus allowed Bill Vander Zalm’s actions as leader of the Social Credit to destroy the Social Credit, it is easy to see how the Liberals and Gordon Campbell became a target of Vander Zalm’s enmity.

In light of Mr. Vander Zalm’s behaviours as leader of the Social Credit there is no surprise in him putting his personal interests above the interests of the province and its citizens by ignoring the damage repaying $1.5 billion would inflict on BC and its citizens and pursuing the opportunity the HST presented to reduce the liberal Party’s popularity (electability),

For Adrian Dix and the NDP the lack of leadership, the inability to forgo the opportunity to gain public popularity at the expense of the liberals and the failure to put the interests of the citizens of BC ahead of Adrian Dix and the NDP’s quest for power disqualifies them from forming the government.

Any party leader and party who would put their personal political interests ahead of the extremely negative consequences that would result for BC and its citizens from repaying $1.5 billion to Ottawa, lacks the ethics and trustworthiness to address the growing number of issues and difficulties facing BC.

To this day Mr Dix and the NDP continue to try to have it both ways, scoring public popularity while refusing/avoiding responsibility for the negative consequences their support of the HST repeal has, and continues to, cost British Columbians.

In taking the easy way out in seeking to bolster their sagging approval ratings, rather than standing firm as was best for BC, the Liberals share in culpability for the negative consequences the repeal of the HST with its $1.5 billion dollar repayment results in.

Motivation, actions and behaviours are far more useful in evaluating stated policies, trustworthiness, character, leadership, ethics and fitness to govern than any words uttered by political parties and their leaders.

While disappointing, in this day and age it is a given that politicians and political parties are about their own interests, telling voters what voters want to hear, not telling voters what they don’t want to hear, avoiding issues etc. It is why one can predict that the NDP platform in this election will be vague to the point of meaningless.

The most important lesson voters need to take away from the HST debacle is not how venal politicians and political parties are, but that the media (print, radio and television) have no interest in and are NOT about informing the public.

When speaking to Mr. Vander Zalm after the return to the PST the media continued to fail to ask Mr. Vander Zalm why he thought returning $1.5 billion to Ottawa was a good idea; what healthcare and other services Mr. Vander Zalm favoured cutting, what hospital construction he favours forgoing, to repay the $1.5 billion to Ottawa.

As Mr. Dix and the NDP run  around the province talking about the failure of the Liberals and the need to build hospitals or spend money on this or that – has the media ever asked Mr. Dix and the NDP how the government is suppose to spend hundreds of millions of dollars when Mr. Dix and the NDP convinced voters to send $1.5 billion back to Ottawa? Did media ever demand Mr. Dix and the NDP explain why they thought sending $1.5 billion back to Ottawa was a good idea? Or ask what Mr. Dix and the NDP would cut and/or forgo to pay for sending that $1.5 billion back to Ottawa.

Of course not. Bringing up issues would have interfered with the entertainment value, the spectacle and the rhetoric.

And of course, acknowledging their culpability in the repeal of the HST and the return of $1.5 billion to Ottawa would put a damper on media running around crying the sky is falling and we need to spend, spend, spend……..money the province does not have.

Has the media ever asked the teachers what healthcare programs the teachers are calling to be cut so the money can be redirected to the education budget? Because the only budget expenditure large enough to cover the cost of the $$$$$ the teachers are calling on the government to spend is healthcare.

Unless the teachers are calling on the government to eliminate an area of spending (the courts and jails for example) to cover the cost of the large increase in education spending the teachers are calling on. Or perhaps the teachers are calling for the imposition of hundreds of millions in new taxes to be poured into education?

Media does not ask the important question of where the money will come from, it quietly takes its 30 pieces of silver for running the teachers ads calling on voters to vote for their children by voting for any party that will dramatically increase spending on education as though the $$$$$ to pay for spending can be found in a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

“We cannot talk about that, people don’t want to hear it”; “Talking about that would reduce ratings, have people turning off or (shudder) turning to the competition”; If it bleeds it leads; the slick, entertaining programming called news is a profit center where the bottom line – not the quality or value of information presented (or not presented) – is the focus and the motivator.

The owners of the media have every right to focus on making money rather than delivering informative, well rounded, balanced reports that increase, not decrease (as it currently does), the public’s ability to make informed decisions.

If you watch Mike Holmes, there is a viewer advisory displayed at the start of the program and every time the program returns from a commercial break.

To protect voters and citizens from being mislead or influenced by the misinformation inherent in today’s broadcast media programming, programming that passes itself off as providing viewers with news and information, should carry a warning that the underlying operational imperatives of the program are based on ratings and financial considerations – not about the public’s need to know.

Media has become about selling the sizzle and ignoring the fact the meat is badly contaminated with Salmonella, E coli, Listeria or Campylobacter.

A lot of people in the media, and some everyday people, really aren’t in search of the truth. They’re in search of something worse than that. Money, yeah. I think the media’s the kind of a thing where the truth doesn’t win, because it’s no fun. The truth’s no fun.      Jack White

Finances, Provincial

BC Hospital Capital Investment

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When you heard/watched/read the medical staff at Royal inland Hospital stating the hospital has been running at over 100% every day since 2013 began, what thoughts were triggered in your mind?

My thoughts went back to Monday April 1st as I was standing at the cash register in a thrift store digging for the extra 21 cents imposed on my $3 purchase by the return of the PST.

As I dumped the change out in search of that 21 cents, I thought about just how appropriate it was that the PST came back on April Fool’s Day.

April Fool’s Day being appropriate only because there is no Stupid’s Day.

Because no matter how you spin it, switching back to the PST from the HST was so financially irresponsible, it blew past the line of colossally irresponsible behaviour into ‘did everybody eat several extra bowls of stupid’ territory.

Forget the petty stuff everyone seemed intent on being bogged down in. Yes many will be happy they do not have to pay 7% provincial tax when they eat out – at least until the eateries put prices up by more than 7% to cover the cost savings lost with the return to the PST.

Because all the ‘the government lied’, ‘they promised’, ‘7%! – the government is going to destroy the food services business’ etc is meaningless when contrasted with the consequences for British Columbia and its citizens of repaying $1.5 billion  to Ottawa.

Want to replace or renew Royal Inland Hospital, Haida Gwaii Hospital or St. Paul’s Hospital? That will require an investment approaching $1 billion and, well Sorry, but that $1 billion is being repaid to Ottawa.

Have other important major capital projects that need investment, renewal or replacement? Sorry, but that 1/2 billion dollars is being repaid to Ottawa as well.

Because the majority of the citizens of BC (those who voted to repeal the HST plus those who did not vote against the repeal of the HST) chose to repay Ottawa the $1.5 billion, rather than using the $1.5 billion dollar bribe Ottawa used to ‘encourage’ BC (and Quebec) to adopt the HST in construction of/at St. Paul’s Hospital, Royal Inland Hospital, Haida Gwaii Hospital or other projects.

So as the media and the opposition joyfully (and unhelpfully) run around pointing out the government has not committed funding to hospital construction, we need to remember that the reason government does not have money to fund hospital construction is that Bill Vander Zalm, Adrian Dix, the NDP and the media convinced the majority of BC residents that sending the $1.5 billion back to Ottawa was a good idea.

 

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.  Edward Abbey