Health system has been broken for two decades

Health care makes up almost half of our provincial budget, yet provincial governments have neglected it in Manitoba for decades. We need to make some big changes to improve patient care and community-based services to fix our health-care system.

We also need to learn from our mistakes. Many of you living in Tyndall Park have expressed great concern about the status of our emergency services. While this has been caused by years of cuts and continuous, disruptive health-care overhauls, nurses, physicians, and many working in various health-care positions have left the field and continue to leave because they are not being respected and are burning out.

I reflect back to 2008 when health care was also not being managed properly under the former NDP government. Many were waiting far too for care. One individual died while waiting 34 hours in emergency at our biggest hospital. An inquiry was conducted, and clear recommendations were made to ensure we improve patient care. Yet still we lack accountability at the provincial level, and I do not understand why nothing has changed in nearly 15 years. We as politicians need to be less partisan. All of us, whether in government or opposition, need to do better at working together to improving the system.

We need to do much better at recognizing credentials and ensuring there are clear pathways for those who have been trained in other countries and want to work in our health-care services – especially because we desperately need more healthcare workers.

We also need clear communication about access to health care, which has been lacking for a long time. Many Manitobans don’t know what hospital or clinic to go to when they need services. I have had emails and people visit me at my weekly McDonalds meetings expressing frustration over the billboards and marketing campaign across the province, which suggests they only add more confusion.

We have extremely long wait lists for surgeries and diagnostic services such as MRIs. Many people aren’t even able to get on wait lists, as they are so backed up. Booking surgeries and diagnostic services has been a growing problem over the past couple decades and I consider this a big failure. Under no circumstance should people who need a brain MRI be told they cannot get an appointment date as the wait list is too long. This is completely unacceptable.

We need to be focused on preventative care and getting early diagnoses to prevent larger issues that are left unchecked. One example of this is diabetes prevention and making sure insulin and pumps are affordable. Mental health care should also be a top priority. The government should be acting to prevent reacting to crises before it’s too late.

Health care is the biggest issue in our province right now and both the former NDP government and the current government have spent more time and resources blaming one another than they have on working to fix the existing issues. We need to stop making health care partisan at the expense of Manitobans’ health and we need to focus on bringing forward tangible solutions that we can implement right now to fix a broken system.

Cindy Lamoureux
Tyndall Park constituency report

Cindy Lamoureux is the Liberal MLA for Tyndall Park.

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