It’s either that or this is yet another excuse to cut and slash and force people into abject poverty while handing over billions to banker buddies and wealthy mega-corporations. Either way, it’s a future of indentured servitude and some pretty bad times under the name of “austerity”.
I mean, how many more times are we going to hear the same bullshit coming out of the government about how they need to cut services and “tighten belts” (exactly like their municipal lick-boots like the Ford stooges), but that eventually we’ll make it out of our financial morass, only to discover that, OH NO! THINGS ARE NOW WAY WORSE THAN EVER! Oh, but this time around, we’ll for sure balance books by the next election (and just to make sure, we’ll fraudulently steal more time at the helm).
There are still idiots out there who believe that what’s happening in Greece (and, at this point, the rest of Europe and pretty much everywhere else), is the result of laziness, or unionization, or other complete and utter nonsense, but it’s getting hard to find people who keep buying the same crap over and over again in the face of blatant lies, theft, open criminality, and every other type of scumbaggery imaginable.
The only explanation for still believing anything that Harper and his criminal buddies dole out is to simply and boldly ignore reality and the regular headlines of massive bank corruption, or to not be able to see the painfully obvious when it’s publicly announced that those same banks are now running much of Europe (and directly responsible for the rape and pillage of the nations under their control). How stupid do you have to be?
Is it any wonder that Harper is so ardently trying to keep anyone from looking into how he manages your tax money? And you can be sure that the money, or savings, or whatever you want to call it, isn’t going to help you.
Take, for example, the “controversial” Multiple Sclerosis Liberation Therapy that the Harper government just killed. In case you’re not familiar with it, it’s a fairly simple, painless day surgery that many MS patients have found helps them to lead much better lives.
It’s fairly risk-free if done by a trained professional; it involves widening a vein in the neck with a tiny balloon (via a vein in the leg and using only local anesthetic), not unlike a riskier procedure regularly done in high-blood-pressure arteries for heart attack patients (done every single day here in Canada). The most expensive and time-consuming part of Liberation is actually the MRI that’s done to assess the patient.
All the doubters out there (many of whom have a direct interest in keeping MS patients at the status quo), have put out a great campaign to convince everyone that the procedure is incredibly risky, not bothering to mention that the risk comes from the people and places where the procedure is currently being done — the kinds of places they maintain you need various inoculations just to visit. And, statistically, you’re much more likely to have “complications” from government-approved medicine like yearly flu vaccinations.
These are the same people who advise patients that things like diet, proper rest, exercise, and lifestyle really don’t matter and that treatments like chemotherapy should be first and foremost (shit you not!) I’m speaking from personal experiences with one of Toronto’s top MS doctors here, straight from his mouth to my shocked ears.
Just because you may not know anyone with MS, however, doesn’t mean that Harper’s deceit won’t affect you. Consider that what his government rejected was simply a study to see if the Liberation Procedure even works; not to implement it, train people on it, etc.
Consider also that a typical Liberation treatment has to be done maybe once every couple of years or so (sometimes not even that), at a cost of about $10,000, while current drug treatments like Copaxone or newer ones like Tysabri (which are still not well understood or studied!), can cost upwards of $100,000 per year — and that doesn’t take into consideration the cost of medical professionals like nurses to administer the IV drugs (plus facilities for them), additional testing like regular blood work, or extra complications like PML, possible birth defects, etc.
The costs, any way you want to tally them, are way too high to be justified.
You know, maybe Liberation isn’t a good answer, but you’d think that being cheaper, easier, much less dangerous, and seemingly quite helpful, it would be worth a look. But no, Harper is working hard to make sure that you’re as dependent as possible for less effective, more expensive, and more dangerous treatments, whenever and wherever possible.
And you’re paying for it! Yup, your tax money is being used for back-asswards, experimental, extremely expensive, and in many cases quite dangerous treatments that do not have any additional benefits for MS patients except to keep their conditions from worsening. I suspect that most people would agree that this makes sense as a last resort, not as a first and only one.
And that’s just what I happen to know because of Sarah and mine’s experience with the medical community and the government. If the amount of willful, known, clear and apparent waste, squandering, and criminal behaviour were ever exposed, I full expect our society would easily revert back to the days of the French revolution. I, for one, would not mind a few heads rolling — I’ll take figuratively, so long as commensurate jail terms are included.