They're also calling on the province to enact what they've proposed as "Finlay's Law" — legislation that would set maximum emergency room wait times
AMAZING. This is obviously needed.
... for children
Oh fuck off.
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2025
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This is obviously needed
Shorter wait times are needed, yes, but a law imposing an arbitrary maximum isn't going to help. Unless you have more and better supported healthcare providers (doctors, nurses, technicians, the entire chain) all that imposing a maximum wait will do is reduce quality of care as people are rushed through or turned away.
I mean I think that is obviously implied. Supposing that people will be rejected from ER so they can maintain their minimum wait time is a wild take.
imposing an arbitrary maximum isn’t going to help
Okay, so don't make them arbitrary. Make them the longest a person with a benchmark issue can safely wait.
Supposing that people will be rejected from ER so they can maintain their minimum wait time is a wild take.
This is already happening, sort of.
When ER rooms are too busy, they refuse intake from ambulances. Meaning the patient stays in the ambulance or in the wait room but under the supervision of the ambulance paramedics, not the hospital... this of course results is even longer wait times, subpar care, and fewer ambulances to deal with emergencies out there
Keep voting Doug Ford Ontario... he'll get to this as soon as the bicycle lanes are gone, that's an obvious priority
What if we say that provincial politicians salaries are garnished after the wait time is exceeded?
I think we could also do that for senior hospital administrators who lack a front-line medical background.
Yeah
The other thing I didn’t like was when they said Finlay “gave up” and he was hypoxic.
Hypoxia causes drowsiness, fatigue, disorientation.
I don’t think it’s fair to say he “gave up”.
He should have been seen earlier, but we all deserve shorter hospital wait times.
Reform, or just better funding?
I feel like both are needed. It seems like healthcare spending increases, but we never have enough providers, and access is decreasing.
FWIW, Ontario has the lowest per capita healthcare spending among the provinces. Maybe due to economies of scale.
Or maybe because we’d prefer to spend our money on reducing taxes for car owners…
Oh fuck off. You car-haters manage to bring that into every issue.
Cars? I don't hate cars. I hate that we're systematically defunding our health care to give people pointless tax breaks so that people will vote for Ford. Does 200$ really compensate anyone for having fewer doctors?
No it doesn't, but then, that's not really an argument to keep nickel-and-diming drivers. I'm all for fair progressive taxation, but it shouldn't be composed of a million government fees that pop up every time you have to deal with the government for any reason. I know Ford got rid of the $200 fee and refunded it for cynical, manipulative reasons, but I'm still glad it's gone, and I have to believe that most people are not stupid enough to be bought by $200.
Ontario is sitting on billions of transfer payments earmarked for healthcare that we're simply not spending. Or at least so I am led to believe by the press and my faulty memory.
said their 16-year-old son, Finlay, had a few days of mild illness and was suffering from migraines before his condition began to worsen.
From what I read about this story last week, he was suffering from pneumonia and sepsis (among other health issues).
The eight hours in the ER, although unacceptable, was the tail end of a much bigger problem with his health.
He should have been brought in days sooner. Pneumonia almost never kills healthy teens, certainly not in a few hours of waiting, so he had other issues going on and I'm sure the hospital will be aggressively defending against this lawsuit.