Ontario health "tax" or "premium" - where has it brought us?

I'm beside myself after listening to a caller on CFRA's Lowell Green show just now. Samantha, a 35 year old woman just called in to lament the fact that she has been waiting for months and months for a "positron emission tomography" or PET scan test here in Ontario.

She has breast cancer that has spread to her liver, and I gathered from her interaction with Lowell that things are grim and there won't be any happy ending to this story.

A PET scan was had in Montreal in exchange for cash early on. The problem is that things have progressed and she needs another scan so that a future meeting with her oncologist will be based on "recent" test results. The cancer is particularly aggressive and having up-to-date information on which to formulate a battle plan is critical.

The most shocking part of the call was the numbers she quoted... and she sounded credible, so I have no doubt the numbers are valid. The province of Quebec "funds" 16,000 PET scans annually. Here in Ontario? 750! She stated that there is one such device at the General campus of the Ottawa Hospital, but that it is only used for research purposes. She did not fit some "criteria" that would qualify her for whatever it is she needs to satisfy in order to get a scan done there. She further stated that there are two at the Civic campus of the Ottawa Hospital but qualified it by saying they're located in the University of Ottawa Heart Institute - and that getting a scan done there for cancer is next to impossible.

Here we are in the midst of a provincial election and much of the talk has been funding private faith school systems for Jewish people and Muslims who make up approximately 1% and 2-3% of our general population, respectively.

What about a much larger segment of our population who suffer from medical conditions that could be more easily treated if facilities were made available?! What has Dalton McGuinty's precious health tax or premium done for people like Samantha?

Some have said that it's easier to get an MRI in Ottawa for a dog or cat than it is for elective joint replacement surgery planning. While I love Jersey (cat) and Digger (dog) dearly, neither one of them are as high up on the priority list as Samantha should be... or anyone else in her shoes.

She said that none of the major party platforms have anything within them to address any of the above points. What's it going to take?!