Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where I Nurse the Health Care System Without a Stethoscope

00:00:00.000 class is in session hey everybody welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session am i sick this week

00:00:10.160 yes yes i am but does it streamline quite nicely into a conversation that i want to have and then

00:00:19.040 we'll be followed up next week with this amazing doctor that i've contacted with absolutely and

00:00:25.000 it's all about healthcare. So this week, I want to talk about my mom's experience with healthcare

00:00:30.940 because she was a nurse for 40 years. I want to talk about my experience within the hospital she

00:00:36.280 worked at and the way healthcare was set up. And then, of course, like every good podcast,

00:00:41.560 I want to really, really, really talk about our healthcare system today, who's driving it into

00:00:49.420 the ground, Doug Ford, I'm talking to you, why they are, how they plan on reviving it, and all

00:00:55.460 of the problems that come in with that kind of issue and that kind of messaging and funding.

00:01:01.440 So let me start with a story. And this is a story about how incredibly important our healthcare

00:01:08.920 system is, but not necessarily just for, let's say, medical attention, right? I think we all can

00:01:17.620 admit, we all can understand how healthcare has different components. And I think it can be broken

00:01:24.180 up into two major things. I think we can talk about medical care. Are we getting the right meds?

00:01:29.860 Is it being treated in a timely fashion? Do we have access to the newest technologies? How quick

00:01:35.620 can all of this happen? I'm going to put that over there. And then the other half is the heart

00:01:42.100 that health care is being managed with,

00:01:45.900 that in order to take care of a person,

00:01:49.440 and I think this is completely true,

00:01:51.580 we need to take care of their,

00:01:54.140 I say soul, I don't mean that in a religious context.

00:01:57.180 I mean that in, we all have watched,

00:02:01.320 probably if you're my age or in and around the 40s,

00:02:05.460 we've watched people struggle and battle.

00:02:08.520 And the one thing that's consistent through all of it

00:02:12.100 is how can we write our brains, how can we create a healthy mindset and energy in order to face what

00:02:22.680 we need to face, in order to keep pushing through what we need to push through? That positive

00:02:26.920 mindset, and people talk about it like that, is, I don't want to say 50%, but you understand what

00:02:33.180 I mean. It's an essential piece of the puzzle, because without it, all the meds in the world,

00:02:37.300 all the fancy doctors in the world, all the MRIs. And it doesn't have the same impact. So let me

00:02:43.880 tell you a story. When I was little, my mom worked at Wellesley Hospital in Toronto. And I used to

00:02:49.820 go there all the time. I mean, I pretty much grew up there. First steps, I think you guys have heard

00:02:53.680 of the first steps to my mom's head nurse. Like I was there a lot back in the day, I guess, when

00:02:57.620 you're allowed to be there. Early 70s to sort of mid to late 80s. And not only did I see how

00:03:05.640 amazing she was and what she did and how she was able to give the care, the medical care she

00:03:12.080 needed. She was an educator. So she taught people about their illness or taught people about the

00:03:17.300 things that they needed to learn so they could go home and take care of themselves. But, and here's

00:03:21.360 the beautiful part, she taught with her heart and she made sure when I was there, I mean, and I,

00:03:27.360 I visually, I, I think I get a lot of my, hopefully a lot of my empathy from her,

00:03:33.500 because she would enter into each one of those rooms, not as a patient lying there in a bed

00:03:38.720 with an illness to be cured, but a person to be taken care of. And she could do that because the

00:03:44.260 system then was funded differently. And we have different resources and we have different personnel

00:03:50.880 and we have different ways in which we focus on the patient. And all of that is being, in my

00:03:58.060 opinion very much gutted today and very much streamlined into a much different dynamics when

00:04:03.820 I was there as a kid there's a lot of patients I saw I mean I I remember one patient I used to go

00:04:09.340 room to room with menus because that was my job at like you know seven eight years old I was that

00:04:14.960 young and I was allowed to interact with patients and some of them were old and on my mom used to

00:04:19.920 work on plastics and ENT and some of them were older um and and had to have work done and then

00:04:26.080 they were sort of there and they couldn't go anywhere else. Their family wasn't visiting.

00:04:29.780 So I'd spend time with them or I'd hand out food pamphlets. There's a few moments that I have

00:04:35.800 burned into my head. And one of them was one of the patients who had a laryngectomy

00:04:40.760 removal of the voice box now had a, you know, a voice box kind of, they, they, they don't have

00:04:50.460 a voice box, so they can't really talk. Eventually they learn how to talk with this sort of

00:04:54.300 computerized. I don't even know how to, you hold it up to your neck and you kind of sound robotic,

00:04:59.180 but you can learn how to make sound lower down. Um, anyway, she had just had it done. It was an

00:05:05.240 older lady and it was bleeding. And I looked at her and I, I remember it quite vividly and she

00:05:11.440 looked a little scared and I said, don't worry, I'm going to go get my mommy. I didn't get scared

00:05:16.820 when I was a kid. Now I pass out flat on the ground, but I didn't get scared as a kid, but I

00:05:21.120 just, you know, it was just like, as a matter of fact, it's the world I grew up in. They were also

00:05:26.960 the first place that started taking care of HIV and AIDS patients, because as you guys might

00:05:35.180 obviously know, in the early 80s is when we discovered HIV and AIDS, and they started sort

00:05:42.700 of flooding into different hospitals in different places, and they started being taken care of in

00:05:46.360 different ways. And in the eighties, in the late eighties, early nineties, they were taken care of

00:05:51.140 with such fear and trepidation. And here's what I have a vivid memory of. I remember a man lying

00:05:58.200 in a hospital, lying in one of the beds. It was in an isolated room. So I couldn't go in. There

00:06:02.700 was a window to the room through the door. And I remember looking at him and he was sitting in the

00:06:08.940 bed alone. Um, you could see some lesions on his face or I could see some lesions on his face.

00:06:13.960 I didn't understand what was wrong with them. But what I did understand is that you couldn't go in

00:06:18.340 the room. So you weren't allowed in the room. And if any nurse or any doctor went in the room at

00:06:22.580 that time, they wore full hazmat gear. I mean, head to toe, like an outbreak scenario, right?

00:06:29.220 Because nobody understood it well enough and everybody was incredibly scared. But I remember

00:06:34.040 thinking to myself, and it was quite burned in my head, how incredibly lonely he was,

00:06:39.620 how incredibly sad it felt um and my mom would purposefully go spend time in this room obviously

00:06:47.320 but again full gear right full gear very little contact with this individual and i'd ask her you

00:06:54.740 know why is he alone she goes well he's really sick and what he has you know other people could

00:06:59.860 get so nobody can go in there my question was but how's he supposed to get better if he can't ever

00:07:06.880 feel better? And as a little kid, it was a very simple question. It was, you see all these other

00:07:14.000 people and how essential it is for people to be around them, for them to experience support and

00:07:20.320 love and attention and companionship. And what we were doing to this gentleman, albeit in the

00:07:27.100 height of fear, even minus the real science, we were taking that away. We removed that piece of

00:07:36.280 the puzzle. And in those early years, as we all know, the medication wasn't what it is today. And

00:07:42.800 it was an incredibly lonely, painful existence. And I remember my mom talking to me and said,

00:07:50.960 her job is to make him feel less alone. Her job, she said, sure, I give meds and I do this and I

00:07:58.180 do that. But my job is the most important part of my job is to make sure that that person knows

00:08:04.440 that somebody cares about them in that building to the point where it's not just about coming in

00:08:10.040 and servicing a bag or hanging a new IV or whatever. It's about, it's about making a

00:08:15.180 connection with that person. I mean, and that's how I grew up. And I grew up with my mom telling

00:08:20.320 those stories. And then eventually my mom became union president of St. Mike's Hospital after

00:08:25.440 Wellesley shut down. And she drove that narrative again and again and again. She actually just told

00:08:30.540 me a story recently about how when they were changing their mission statement on this is

00:08:35.460 hilarious they were changing right before she does she retired they were changing her the mission

00:08:39.720 statement of the hospital and nowhere in the mission statement was about caring and compassion

00:08:45.780 nowhere in the mission statement was it about connecting with patients was it about tapping

00:08:51.340 into that positive aspect of their soul to help the healing to help the care nowhere and my mom

00:08:58.540 she's like, well, she's like, I've never sat in a room with a CEO and yelled so much in my life. 1.00

00:09:04.200 How dare they take that part out? And he's like, well, but that's not the important part.

00:09:09.120 We're steering this towards a new way. We want education. We want the highest technical expertise.

00:09:14.980 We want this. And my mom said, of course we do. Of course you want all that. Nobody's arguing with

00:09:20.460 that. But you're advocating that technology is going to take the place of compassion,

00:09:25.060 that new equipment is going to take the place of connection and encouraging and, and, you know,

00:09:31.500 the ability of a nurse. And most of the times nurse doctors aren't in there for long periods

00:09:36.500 of time, right? Nurses have that day to day contact. If you ever spent any time in your 0.57

00:09:41.140 hospital, you know, doctors are very important. I have all the respect in the world, but it's a

00:09:45.520 nurse, the nurse that is beside your bed. When you are at your worst, when you're at your most

00:09:50.080 fearful, when your family can't be there, that's the person, that's the individual that's going to

00:09:57.340 give you a semblance of strength to push through. So my mom nursed and was president, you know,

00:10:05.400 right up until about, ooh, I guess just under 10 years now. And she could see it changing.

00:10:11.460 She could see it changing. And specifically for, you know, one very obvious reason, it's money.

00:10:18.180 It's flat out money, guys.

00:10:19.620 I mean, if anybody ever says it's anything but, they're lying and they're trying to sell

00:10:23.220 you something, it's money.

00:10:24.700 Healthcare in Canada and Ontario is incredibly expensive.

00:10:27.440 I'm not going to lie.

00:10:28.360 Of course it is.

00:10:29.460 And now we've seen a shift. 0.93

00:10:31.480 So my mom's a part of the baby boom generation.

00:10:33.320 So now we've seen this huge shift into a very top end heavy system.

00:10:41.280 Meaning when my mom was in the baby boom and they were all in high school, right?

00:10:45.240 They built so many high schools to sort of build that and have that as the basis for 0.73

00:10:50.660 this new generation.

00:10:51.800 Well, now that generation is in their 60s and 70s, and unfortunately, for a lot of them,

00:11:00.080 their health isn't perfect, so they have to battle different things.

00:11:05.260 Obviously, my mom's battled cancer.

00:11:07.460 Cancer by 2030 should be, Princess Margaret stipulates that it will be one in two.

00:11:13.540 One in two.

00:11:14.340 50 percent 50 percent of people will have cancer at some point in their life that that does not

00:11:20.100 mean 50 percent of people will die from cancer that does not mean people can't beat it doesn't

00:11:25.640 not mean any of those things but 50 percent of people in north america will have to well in

00:11:30.060 i mean i guess canada as their statistic will have to face and deal with that and we've gotten

00:11:35.260 really good at treating cancer right i know we've had some cures absolutely but we've got really

00:11:41.420 good at treating cancer and a lot of other diseases, including HIV and AIDS. And we've

00:11:46.800 gotten great at it. What that means is we've figured out ways to prolong lifespans of people

00:11:54.140 living with illnesses and disease that will eventually, possibly mean the end of their life.

00:12:02.120 But we've stretched that from two years to five years to 10. People with HIV and AIDS, I mean,

00:12:08.220 we're talking 30, 40, like lifetimes, lifetimes, but that comes at a cost, right? And that cost is

00:12:17.280 brand new medicines. Don't get me started on the pharmaceutical companies. I can't deal with that

00:12:21.820 right at this moment, but brand new medicines that cost incredible sums of money, technologies

00:12:26.220 that are incredibly expensive because they're brand new. That's what's keeping all of these

00:12:31.180 individuals alive. And for the most part with a pretty good quality of health, but we're not

00:12:37.800 curative yet. So we're at a stage where healthcare is costing more than ever before.

00:12:47.440 And here's the rub. It's costing more because we're serving a much bigger population. It's

00:12:54.020 costing more because we have brand new technologies that are more expensive. It's costing more

00:12:57.760 because we're elongating people's lives, living with illness that 20 years ago,

00:13:03.080 that would have been the end. So for all of these reasons, it makes sense. It is not just

00:13:10.380 per person because there's more people. It's per person and then times some because of the quality

00:13:16.120 and the length and the duration of healthcare. So here we sit. So then we have an Ontario government

00:13:21.920 that looks at this, and I'm going to go back to my Karis a little bit, but looks at this and goes,

00:13:26.520 how do we save money? How do we save money? Because this is becoming explosively expensive.

00:13:31.900 Let's all put that on the table right now. Incredibly expensive for all the reasons I

00:13:37.060 just stipulated. So how do we save money? How do we reduce costs? One of the first ways I saw them

00:13:45.340 reducing costs, obviously, is you give more patients to fewer nurses. Simple. You tell them,

00:13:51.880 let's be honest, you tell them that their job is no longer caring and compassion,

00:13:58.720 that their job is a medical service industry.

00:14:04.820 If you're not caring about somebody's heart,

00:14:06.800 you can be in and out quicker.

00:14:08.740 And I'm, guys, I'm obviously using language

00:14:11.560 nobody would ever use,

00:14:12.740 but this is what they meant by the language

00:14:14.600 that they so carefully selected.

00:14:16.600 Let's be honest, right?

00:14:18.900 So you spend less time.

00:14:20.440 If you spend less time, you can see more patients.

00:14:22.200 You can see more patients.

00:14:23.120 We can do the job more efficiently.

00:14:24.380 It's going to cost less.

00:14:25.320 Well, that's only going to work for so long, right?

00:14:28.720 But nonetheless, we're in that. We're 100% in that. Patient and nurse ratio care has gone from

00:14:37.100 acceptable, doable to holy crap, I'm terrified. I cannot possibly get to all my patients within

00:14:44.700 the allotted time to make sure they're okay. It's getting, and I'm not even going to speak

00:14:49.080 about COVID, but it's getting to a dangerous level that nobody seems to understand.

00:14:54.260 Breakneck speeds here.

00:14:56.360 So that's part and parcel of it.

00:14:59.280 But that's not enough money.

00:15:00.820 That's not enough money, right?

00:15:02.900 We all know that the way that we pay for health care is through taxes.

00:15:06.860 Well, if we're really top end heavy, it doesn't take a great economics expert to understand that we have fewer people giving the tax system and more and more people who have retired who aren't giving the same way that they used to give.

00:15:20.040 These people are becoming dependent on the tax base.

00:15:23.280 Tax base isn't big enough.

00:15:24.860 That's why immigration is incredibly important in this country, but I digress.

00:15:28.000 I can do that in another one.

00:15:29.760 So incredibly important.

00:15:32.480 So as this is all happening, we're starting to see politicians freak out.

00:15:37.740 And guys, I can slam Doug Ford all I want, but politicians across the, let's say, across the party lines.

00:15:45.200 you have people like sorry Bob Ray so Bob Ray came in in the 90s he was an NDPer he was an NDPer

00:15:56.480 for those Americans this is our most socialist party so the furthest left political party we

00:16:02.200 have and he came in and 1991 was one of the worst recessions Canada has ever seen saving the United

00:16:08.640 States. And he came in and went, uh-oh. Well, I don't want to raise taxes because, guys,

00:16:15.380 nobody wants anybody to raise taxes ever. We want more social services for the same money we're

00:16:21.820 giving. And nobody wants to be the person that says that doesn't work in this scenario.

00:16:27.020 The numbers don't pan out, right? Nobody wants to say that because nobody's going to elect them,

00:16:31.300 even if they're saying the truth. But Bob Ray came in and he goes, okay, here's what we're

00:16:35.420 going to do? We're going to have something called Ray Days. This is kind of crazy, but Ray Days meant

00:16:41.040 that every public service, this was a way to avoid mass layoffs. This was a way to ensure that we

00:16:47.680 were still getting the same sort of numbers of people, teachers, police, all those people, right?

00:16:54.300 Nurses doing their jobs, but we all had to take an economic hit. So 12 days a year, one day a month,

00:17:03.520 everybody would have to take one unpaid

00:17:06.320 like sort of sick day

00:17:08.920 they'd have to take one day where they kind of worked for free

00:17:13.140 they were called ray days

00:17:15.040 and this was a way

00:17:19.460 that he facilitated or figured out

00:17:22.020 that we could save enough money so we'd have no layoffs

00:17:24.960 because we can't raise taxes, because people don't like that

00:17:27.660 we can't raise taxes, but we still need to provide the same social services

00:17:30.960 And this was a way that everybody could take a hit on the chin at the same time. People lost their ever loving minds in the 90s. The NDP has never regained any significant momentum because of that. But the funny part is, if you were to really look at it, it was a relatively equitable solution for the government to take.

00:17:52.640 and it meant nobody lost their jobs, which again, in retrospect, we probably would have voted again

00:18:02.540 for, but what did we do? Well, everybody was furious, furious. How dare you? And it was hard.

00:18:08.780 There's no way around it. And what did Ontario do? They elected in Mike Harris. And again,

00:18:13.540 for my American friends listening, Mike Harris is the opposite of the most socialist political

00:18:18.780 political party in Canada, in Ontario. He is incredibly conservative. His nickname,

00:18:28.040 Mike the Knife, just to get a glimmer, a picture of who he was, Mike the Knife.

00:18:33.880 Now, when Mike the Knife took stage, he slashed everything, just everything. He destroyed,

00:18:39.860 he tried to figure out ways to destroy the teachers' unions. He slashed things from

00:18:44.000 hospitals. He shut down hospitals. He amalgamated hospitals into sort of central bargaining to try

00:18:50.340 to reduce the administrative level of each hospital. So now you have groupings of hospitals

00:18:56.980 and these groupings of hospitals, instead of having individualized administrative bodies,

00:19:01.920 they'd have an overarching administrative body. Now you would think that would save money, right?

00:19:07.240 I'm going to simplify it here. You have three hospitals. You don't no longer have three CEOs.

00:19:11.420 You have one CEO, but guess what? That CEO can't get the job done. You can't possibly run that.

00:19:18.900 If you could have done that, you would have done it a long time ago. If a CEO of a hospital was

00:19:24.420 sitting around doing nothing all day, get rid of their job and figure out a way. And what they

00:19:29.620 found out is they just needed to hire more people. So this amalgamation never saved any money. It was

00:19:33.880 really pretty on the front end. There was also tons of horrific spinoff from the cuts to social

00:19:39.860 services, including a bunch of people that got very, very sick, and some people that did not

00:19:44.020 make it through the Walkerton crisis in the water supply, when the water supply was contaminated,

00:19:52.360 mostly because he cut back on people testing the water and all of that kind of stuff.

00:19:57.920 So we lived through Mike Harris, shut down Wellesley Hospital, which is where my mom,

00:20:02.660 you know, did a residency and became a nurse and did all of these great things,

00:20:06.600 And I took my first steps and all of that. And there's lots of political reasons going on because there's two hospitals up to be shut. Wellesley and St. Mike's. Wellesley at St. Mike's. Look, Wellesley Hospital Hospital Service St. Jamestown, which is one of the poorer areas, very, very needy, high prostitution population, incredibly high low income population.

00:20:32.700 the trans community, the gay community, all within that facility. So you can only imagine 0.98

00:20:39.100 which hospital, in his infinite wisdom, Mike Harris decided to sit down and shut down.

00:20:48.120 It made no sense. St. Mike's is right beside, right downtown, and it's right beside

00:20:53.540 the Eaton Center. There's no place for it to grow. So it's a very hard hospital to grow into

00:20:58.480 something bigger. Meanwhile, Wellesley had all of this land. Again, I digress. But again,

00:21:04.740 we're looking at what are we doing to cut funding? And then we had a bunch of liberal years.

00:21:12.020 And in those liberal years, there was no more cuts. But again, it was about doing more with

00:21:18.800 less. That became sort of the cause of the day, doing more with less. And it's in that framework,

00:21:25.100 in that timeframe, we would have hit SARS, right? And one of the things that my mom fought for when

00:21:30.800 it came to SARS, which for those who don't remember, it was a respiratory virus that spread

00:21:35.460 around. We created the need for, I'm going to say the mask wrong, N191, N1, and, you know, masks,

00:21:44.980 those really high tech masks that had to get fitted. My mom fought for the need for that.

00:21:50.980 So every nurse had one.

00:21:52.300 Now, in order to get a doctor, in order to get those, you need to be fitting for them

00:21:56.180 every six months.

00:21:57.140 So that all happened.

00:21:58.060 And that was all in place.

00:22:00.540 And then SARS went away.

00:22:01.920 And when SARS went away, guess what sort of took a hit?

00:22:05.340 Well, we can cut money from that, right?

00:22:08.460 So they cut money, cut money, cut money.

00:22:10.400 And then all of a sudden you're in the middle of COVID and nobody has any masks.

00:22:15.280 Again, it was just about how many edges can we cut somewhere in that duration.

00:22:20.980 My timing might be a little off, right? But come after the 90s, let's say mid to late 90s,

00:22:30.000 you started seeing the introduction of different types of nurses. And again, my timing might be

00:22:36.040 off, but you're going to understand what I mean in a second. So my mom's an RN. When my mom became 0.99

00:22:40.680 an RN in the 70s, I think the 70s, when my mom became an RN in the 70s, the requirement was you

00:22:46.680 went to college and then you did a residency where you lived at the hospital and you worked

00:22:52.000 there. So she lived at Wellesley Hospital and worked there and did a residency very similarly

00:22:56.860 to the way a doctor would do a residency as a nurse and you became an RN. At some point along

00:23:01.380 the nines, I don't know the year, they started demanding a university degree to become an RN.

00:23:07.220 You had to go to university to become an RN. So all of the nurses, so my mom would have, 0.86

00:23:12.100 you know, kept that ranking of RN, but every RN sort of new graduates would now have new

00:23:18.000 expectations. We needed more academic knowledge. We needed more education. So it raised,

00:23:23.860 which fine. I get it. With the changing times, there's better ways of doing things. I don't know

00:23:28.100 if it was better than the residency program my mom went with. You can talk about that later,

00:23:32.180 but here's why I thought they did it. Because the nurses have a pretty strong union. 1.00

00:23:37.100 And over the years, they have fought and won through labor relations, through collective bargaining rights, through arbitration, a very, very healthy, somewhat respectable pay grid.

00:23:53.540 Not to say they can't keep fighting for more and not to say that they haven't had things taken away.

00:23:57.880 And the government needed to find how, in a world where we need a bunch of nurses, but now we are up against a union, so we can't pay them less, we can't fire them. How do we get a new sort of realm of nurses into the hospitals and pay them less? I'll tell you how they did it. 0.96

00:24:17.620 Well, they created a registered nursing assistant. Now there's different acronyms. Okay. But this individual would go to college. Sounds glaringly familiar. They would go to college for three years. They would become a nurse's assistant, a registered nurse's assistant, an RNA, again, different acronyms, but you understand what I'm saying.

00:24:39.560 And their job would be pretty much to do the role of an RN, except, and this has changed, and my mom has given me this information, the way they divided it was registered nursing assistants or RPMs or whatever, these individuals could not nurse with acute patients.

00:25:03.560 patients, meaning if their care wasn't stable, they couldn't be on the floor. So you guys know

00:25:10.780 this. There's people who get tonsillectomies. There's people who get minor surgeries. There

00:25:15.280 are people in the hospital, right? They have a baby and then they're just recovering and then

00:25:18.700 they go home. So all of these stable patients, you could now use a college graduate nurse,

00:25:26.180 but here's the kicker. Here's the kicker. They get paid 40% less at top end.

00:25:30.620 oh there it is there's the money there's the money they created a whole different title

00:25:39.500 and somewhat of a different job description although the job description now is indiscernible

00:25:45.080 I'm telling you a different job description why I'll tell you why because they realize that unless

00:25:54.260 they created a whole different type of nurse there was no way they could start under paying

00:25:59.240 them for what they did. So now you start seeing more and more. So to every one nurse, you have

00:26:06.640 more assistants. You have more RNAs or RPNs, whatever you call them, right? Why? Well,

00:26:12.460 because you have that one person to handle the acute care and then everybody else can do

00:26:18.260 everything else. Recently, that's even changed. Now that isn't even a discernible characteristic.

00:26:26.460 I have a really hard time, and I would love it if people were in the comments, to really discern on the floor.

00:26:33.240 Because now, just so we all are clear, the one place you would expect that RPNs and RNAs or whatever you call it wouldn't be able to nurse would be an eMERGE, right?

00:26:44.420 EMERGE would be the most acute care, would be the highest risk, all of those kinds of things.

00:26:49.520 Of course they can now.

00:26:51.180 So they had to change that description. 1.00

00:26:52.720 so they change that description different title different education so now you're an rn that's

00:27:00.620 gone to university you get you know i don't know in ontario you get paid very well let's say

00:27:04.820 90 000 100 000 a year you went to college it's doing the same job pretty much the same job you

00:27:11.200 get 60 there's the difference right there's the difference so now what you have these differences

00:27:21.260 in pay. And now they're like, oh, the expectation of going to university, we don't need anymore

00:27:28.680 because we're noticing that these nurses coming out of college are doing great jobs because they 0.98

00:27:32.440 are. They're magnificent nurses. But if we call them something different, we can pay them something 0.87

00:27:41.320 less. And then you topple that with spending less time in the room. And you couple that again with

00:27:48.780 doing more and more jobs that you didn't have to do before, but now you're having to cover.

00:27:55.320 Less time with their hearts, less time with their energy and their positive attitude, right?

00:28:01.640 Why? Well, because we just keep shoving more and more nurses in there. Sorry, more and more 1.00

00:28:05.900 patients in there, fewer and fewer nurses. The government loves to talk about how many hospital

00:28:10.680 beds. If I have to hear him say he's bought hospital beds anymore, I'm going to lose my mind

00:28:17.460 because a hospital bed is about as good as a brand new MRI machine if there's nobody there

00:28:24.400 to run it. Lying down in a bed isn't healthcare. Whoever thought this was a good idea? Well,

00:28:35.860 it's a good idea because it makes it sound like you're fighting the problem,

00:28:40.480 when in actuality we are at a crossroads and i'm going to give you the painful honest truth

00:28:48.820 it's going to cost more money it's going to cost a lot more money there's no way around it it's

00:28:55.640 going to cost a lot more money so what is for trying to do now well he's trying to privatize

00:28:59.500 if he takes money out of the system right he takes money out of the system and i'm not going to talk

00:29:06.120 too much about the canadian health care act he takes money out of the system and the americans

00:29:09.660 if americans are listening to this you must be shaking your head right now because you're

00:29:13.600 thinking canada you have this amazing beautiful free health care paid by pataxas was not free

00:29:20.820 don't get rid of that don't get rid of that because you guys guys down in the states you

00:29:26.860 don't have insurance you're you it is a hellscape right yet as you guys are trying to push towards

00:29:35.600 our system. We are, and our governments, and even some of, obviously some of our systems are doing

00:29:41.080 everything we can to gut and clear out and race ourselves towards the broken system that the

00:29:50.300 United States has proven to have. It's just asinine. So we start defunding things. We start pushing it 0.99

00:29:58.600 off. So in the first place, you'll start hearing things like, okay, fine, we're going to have

00:30:03.540 private companies that we're going to contract out to that you can take your OHIP card, which is like

00:30:08.620 our provincial insurance that everybody has. You can take your OHIP card to any MRI private

00:30:14.840 institution, give them your OHIP card, and then the government will pay. Just as a question to

00:30:21.720 everybody, how does that make sense? How does that save us money? How does it save us any money?

00:30:29.600 Well, I'll tell you how it saves us money, because that MRI private clinic now can decide how they staff it, how they insure it, how much they pay their people.

00:30:42.800 He is, Doug Ford and the Conservatives

00:30:47.020 Are trying to privatize industry

00:30:50.120 Like healthcare

00:30:51.280 To get around the power 1.00

00:30:54.260 A of a nurses union

00:30:55.440 B of an effective

00:30:57.560 Pay rate

00:31:00.480 They can get rid of benefits

00:31:03.300 They can contract out

00:31:05.460 So that benefits go

00:31:06.860 So that sick time goes

00:31:09.540 all of those things that cost hospitals and they do an incredible benefits and sick time. 0.90

00:31:16.580 It's not the $90,000 pay grade that a nurse gets. It's the benefits of sick time. That's 0.84

00:31:22.100 incredibly expensive. All those things that they fought for. They're trying to get a find a way

00:31:25.980 around those things. Make no mistake about it. That's what the privatization is about.

00:31:30.880 The privatization about is I need to get them to an MRI machine, but I don't want a union nurse 0.94

00:31:38.240 or a lab tech or whatever, having to be there and pay, then we can bring the numbers down. 0.68

00:31:44.060 We can bring the cost down. If we can bring the cost down, everybody gets healthcare. It's amazing.

00:31:48.620 We all go home. It's a way, and we've seen this with education, it's a way to usurp and underpin

00:31:56.140 collective bargaining and labor rights. But I'll tell you what else it's going to do.

00:32:04.220 and it's already doing it. It's also a way to create a level of two-tier health care

00:32:10.620 because once you have these things set up, once I say you can go use your OHIP card,

00:32:20.200 make no mistake about it. Anybody who says any different is lying. They will say, yeah,

00:32:25.820 and if you can pay $1,000 on Thursdays, it'll be open for private use. An extra

00:32:34.060 thousand. So if you can pay an extra thousand, you can come on a Friday,

00:32:38.480 because Fridays we're just taking care of people who can fund it themselves.

00:32:43.320 There's a slippery slope. And our government has defunded a lot of

00:32:47.960 different things. Our provincial government used to pay for part

00:32:52.220 chiropractic gone our provincial government used to pay for um some eye doctor stuff gone

00:32:59.260 our provincial government here's where i'm coming full circle here used to pay for relatively new

00:33:06.780 tests that could detect cancers in our genetic composition that you could get paid for a biohip

00:33:14.380 gone you want that test go ahead pay for yourself and everybody's like well listen it's what we have

00:33:20.700 to do right it's what we have to do to survive the healthcare system no no this is what's going

00:33:25.100 to kill the healthcare system and the real pain in the butt of the whole thing is this is what's

00:33:31.740 going to cost us so much more money down the line because instead of the the government paying for

00:33:38.060 that test that genetic test for a particular type of cancer we are going to wait to find out

00:33:45.980 if people get the cancer and when people do get the cancer the treatment for one person

00:33:53.120 because we didn't use the predictive test before will dwarf the amount of money we would have spent

00:34:01.540 on the predictive test but here's the problem when you match and this is why we're supposed

00:34:05.620 to have the canadian health care act to protect this as a constitute it should be protected as

00:34:10.360 constitutional basic need because if you have a government trying to save money and they can do

00:34:15.740 it any way they want. And this is one of the ways they're going to do it. All they're concerned

00:34:20.780 with, and it's not even because they're just so incredibly, horribly self-interested. It's because

00:34:26.360 we're a part of that problem too. They're concerned with getting elected again and again and again.

00:34:33.020 But if I cost you, if I said, you guys got to vote for me, don't worry, I'm not running.

00:34:37.460 You guys got to vote for me. And I said, listen, we're going to put in three times. I'm going to

00:34:43.740 go real big. Three times the amount. I'm going to raise taxes. We're going to put in three times

00:34:48.860 the amount into healthcare this year, or for X amount of years. And what we're going to do is

00:34:55.080 we're going to try to pour money into preventative medicine. All of those tests across the board,

00:35:00.580 pour money into it, right? All of the different kind of way of... And in 20 years, guys, in 20

00:35:07.760 years, those people won't be getting as sick, won't be occupying the time. You have chiropractic

00:35:14.960 care, you have osteo care, and we're not going to have the significant back problems where people

00:35:19.100 are getting their vertebrae fused. If we do the cancer test now, 20 years down the road,

00:35:27.340 like my mom, you're not getting your bladder removed and your hysterectomy and all of the

00:35:31.280 follow-up radiation and chemotherapy and immunotherapy, it's all gone. But you don't

00:35:37.160 get to see that. The break in cost isn't for 20 years. So nobody wants to buy into it. So when I

00:35:45.820 get angry at the government, yeah, sure, I'm angry at Ford. But guys, we do. We elect those people.

00:35:51.700 We elect those people. And if we don't want to pay now, that's okay. I mean, I get it. I don't

00:35:58.800 want my taxes going up. Joanne, I can't afford. I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it. What?

00:36:02.480 make no mistake

00:36:03.900 unless we raise

00:36:05.740 we can't even keep it the same

00:36:08.600 we can't keep it the same guys

00:36:10.220 because there's more people who are sick

00:36:12.280 it doesn't make sense, the numbers don't make sense

00:36:15.020 the bottom

00:36:17.060 can't take care of this ballooning 0.94

00:36:19.180 top mass of people

00:36:20.820 so we need more money

00:36:21.920 and not only do we need more money

00:36:24.920 to take care of those people, we need more money

00:36:26.520 because if we take care of these people better today

00:36:29.000 we won't need all of that money

00:36:30.780 in 20 years

00:36:31.400 so it's up to us isn't it i can sit here and yell yell at dog ford all i want i mean i wish he was

00:36:38.620 more honest i wish he could read from the teleprompter sure but at the end of the day

00:36:44.640 he's making promises that sound like this don't worry guys i'm gonna fix the health care health

00:36:53.080 care system because what the real big problem is the big problem is government doesn't know

00:36:57.760 how to organize it. Government doesn't know how to use money. Government... No, guys, what the big 0.53

00:37:02.680 problem is in that, it's not the government. It's that those people have incredibly deserved

00:37:10.140 well-paying, secure, high-benefit job security that enables them to live an amazing life and

00:37:19.700 do a very important job and get paid well as a direct result of that. He wants to figure out

00:37:26.320 how to get rid of that. When he says the government doesn't do it right, it's because he's saying

00:37:31.160 we're paying nurses too much money and we're paying staff too much money. How do we get around

00:37:34.600 that? How do we get around that? And if you think for a minute, I don't support college-educated

00:37:45.080 nurses and doing that residency, you're crazy. Mine was the best nurse I've ever seen in my 0.68

00:37:49.080 entire life, bar none. I know I'm biased, but I'm bar none. And you know what? You can go ask

00:37:54.520 Wellesley and St. Mike's all about it. So I am not saying the type of education. I am saying

00:38:03.140 the type of education has been delineated in order to underpay, undervalue, and throw work on people

00:38:11.040 without paying them what they do, without paying them what nurses have fought for.

00:38:17.740 So that's what our government's doing. So you have a choice. We all have a choice.

00:38:22.140 we can pay the same in taxes and watch our government cut the healthcare system because

00:38:34.720 that will happen it's not magic nobody nobody's in the healthcare industry just throwing out

00:38:40.560 tongue depressors see how much money they can want it's just it's not the reality we can either do

00:38:45.320 that and watch it slowly degrade and slowly sell off pieces. Like you're pulling apart a car,

00:38:52.920 selling the hubcaps over here and the tires over here and hoping they all do a good job to put the

00:38:57.300 car back together in the end. Or we can put more money in the system. We can put more money in the

00:39:04.840 system. We can adjust the way that we do business and not just adjust the way we do business because

00:39:09.280 I care about people and because the way my mom used to nurse was better because she had more

00:39:13.520 time with the patient because he cared about the whole patient be selfish about it because in 20

00:39:19.620 years what kind of society do you want to walk around what kind of society do you want to see

00:39:27.700 exist because it's if it's preemptive then we need to pour money into into education and health care

00:39:37.840 and chiropractics, all of this stuff, osteo, all of this stuff that can prevent long-term

00:39:46.220 serious injuries from happening, including screening for cancers and all of those, screening

00:39:50.920 for any other. I mean, I'm speaking about cancer because to be honest, it's not like I have lots

00:39:55.400 of firsthand knowledge with every other issue on the planet or healthcare issue. But if we do that,

00:40:01.220 Then in 20 years, we get to walk around and we get to not carry it as heavy or, you know, we do nothing or we watch the government, heaven forbid, offer us money back, which is what's happening right now, for the love of God.

00:40:17.400 How dare we take $130 back on our license plate sticker, $1.2 billion, $1.2 billion a year when our hospitals look the way they do.

00:40:31.220 How dare we take that bribe?

00:40:35.800 And there's many ways we've taken the bribe, and in education, in many different ways.

00:40:39.900 The government keeps handing us back $100, $200, $300 per year.

00:40:44.080 That's great.

00:40:45.620 That's great.

00:40:46.680 I mean, and it makes us all like, yay, what an embarrassing, A, it's an embarrassing bribe.

00:40:52.440 but b it's a bribe that when you multiply it over ontario and you get to the billions of money

00:41:00.060 of dollars that they're saving and they're giving back and they're not investing they're not putting

00:41:07.340 into health care they're not putting into education and we're wondering why it's getting worse well

00:41:11.480 there it is so i can sit here all i want complain about doug but i really have to complain about us

00:41:17.340 who we vote for. The fact that 17% of the population voted for Doug Ford and somehow

00:41:23.120 he managed to get a majority government, the way our system works, great. But you know what the

00:41:26.820 end of the day is? There's a whole bunch of people sitting around believing the most ridiculous 0.99

00:41:34.660 cognitive dissidents I've ever heard. I am going to give you more social services, 0.94

00:41:41.100 but I'm going to charge you less. If you believe that, guys, I got some land to sell you,

00:41:48.720 you know, off the coast, off the shore of Newfoundland on some... I have a lot of things

00:41:53.840 I can sell you because you know, flat out in your head, it's just not true. And you're choosing to

00:41:58.960 believe it because you'd rather have 200 bucks in your pocket, wouldn't we all? Then really tackle

00:42:03.820 the bigger issues that you cannot be giving back money when our institutions are in a state of

00:42:10.020 crisis. And that's on us. And we'll see it. We'll watch it crumble if we're not careful,

00:42:17.900 if we don't stand up, if we don't make a change in the way that our money should be allocated

00:42:23.840 and what we should demand in our government and what we should demand of our leaders and

00:42:29.320 of ourselves when we go out and vote. But I'll tell you what, you hear all the,

00:42:34.340 if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. I think it's time to put your money

00:42:38.760 where your mouth is. Period. If you don't have your health, what do you have? And in this country

00:42:46.640 right now, in this province where I think we're at a very much tipping point, do you want health

00:42:51.940 care that is for everybody, that is useful, that is holistic, that takes care of the person,

00:42:58.860 takes care of the worker who, by the way, especially during COVID, but shoulders every

00:43:06.740 piece of our emotional, physical well-being? Is that where you want to take the money away?

00:43:13.120 Well, you guys have to choose. And on that note, I know it wasn't an uplifting one, but it is

00:43:19.360 uplifting because we have decisions to make. Doug Ford doesn't make our decisions. We make the

00:43:26.300 decisions. We make the decisions with how we vote. We make the decisions with what we stand for

00:43:30.380 and the choices we make and why we make them. So it's time to make a good decision. If you're

00:43:35.680 going to say, I'd rather have 200 bucks in my pocket. I don't need genetic testing for cancer.

00:43:39.900 You're welcome. In a democracy, you're welcome to make that decision. But please, for the love of

00:43:43.520 God, do not go walking around saying, oh, well, there's just a bunch of extra money floating

00:43:49.280 around. And he's just giving back what's owed. And don't worry, my healthcare system is going

00:43:53.980 to be just the same as it was last year. Because you know, by all rationality, that's a delusion.

00:44:01.000 So don't do that. Next week, I'm going to have an amazing doctor on my podcast. We're going to

00:44:05.660 talk about long-term care and sort of the, I mean, and considering we have this balloon of a

00:44:11.060 population, the after effects of all of this and how we're dealing with an aging population and

00:44:15.180 what goes into long-term care and how those are being privatized, how Doug Ford is trying to

00:44:19.280 manipulate that situation. But thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I encourage you to

00:44:26.820 seriously, in a way that you've never done before, make sure you understand where money goes,

00:44:35.200 Make sure you understand what common sense looks like

00:44:37.460 and then make your decision.

00:44:39.480 And then make your decision.

00:44:40.780 Because what we do now is the next 50 years.

00:44:45.240 Thank you guys so much for hanging out with me.

00:44:47.640 I will see you next Tuesday.

00:44:49.860 Same bat time, same bat station. 0.87

00:44:52.860 Dismissed. 1.00

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - December 06, 2022

The One Where I Nurse the Health Care System Without a Stethoscope

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