My Newest Blog

As I wrote a short time ago, my life has changed rather significantly. I will not go into it in a lot of detail but obviously my illness that I suffered some time ago really was the cause of the transformation and not just because I was adding on a few years to my birthdate. What I am experiencing is different now compared with what it was before. 

To be direct, until I got ill, nothing really changed too dramatically in how I carried on. I was lucky when I was admitted into hospital that the Emergency doctor had some idea about what my illness was and started treating me until his diagnosis was confirmed. Yet, for several years after that, I did not seem to experience a big change in how I was living. Oh sure, I was no longer “working” anymore but nothing hit me really about how my life had changed. Why would it? I was spending most of my time getting better from, as examples, learning how to walk again to how to eat the proper food and then helping my wife as we went shopping to our favorite outlets around the area.

I finally only discovered much less than a year ago how dramatically my life had changed. I am not really sure why I did not know well what was going on in the way I was now living but I think there were some reasons for it. Clearly, the biggest one was recovering from the dramatic illness that I suffered. The doctors in this area were very unfamiliar with what I was experiencing but worked very hard to help me out. Fortunately, for me, they did a great job. Their efforts took me quite some time to fully develop. I believe that I am about as recovered now as one could expect with someone who was as ill as I was with this virtually unknown disease. Yet, this took up a lot of time and effort on my part.

As I have said, my life is not the same at all compared with how it was before. I really do not have any goals any longer that I had to reach the way I did when I was working with others in a very professional way. I do not have to meet my requirements that were set up in a company for which I was an employee. Nor do I have to accomplish the objectives of mine set up as part of the media outlet in which I was involved for so many years. It seems as if I had to pass through that kind of a life before and now can just enjoy getting up every day to accomplish whatever seems to make sense to me at that time.

Sure, I still write articles but this time I do so for my own, personal Blog site. I do it not for financial gain or as a “power” tool. I do it because I like to write about matters that go on around me and to let others know about what I think about them. I really have no idea about how many people actually read the articles nor does it really matter to me. I just write them to set out for myself how I feel about different subjects. Naturally, I still want to have a number of persons taking a look at what I write but I doubt that there are all that many who do these days.

I still have objectives that I would like to reach. However, they are not at all like the ones I had in the past when I had to focus so much on my financial side to make sure that there was enough money around for my wife and children to do well if I was no longer here. No, my life is so much different now that what I am trying to accomplish is no longer the same as well. I do not intend to talk a lot about my personal side but just let you know that I have changed.

I appreciate that this Blog section is very personal. However, I have not gone into a very detailed conversation about it. I do not think that I have to do so. Whether you agree or not with the tasks that I am doing these days is not all that important because you may never carry on similar matters in your life. You have your own goals to reach.

All I wanted to let you know is that I believe that I am a different person compared with my past and that there are reasons for this. Who knows, you may experience something similar yourself. Best of luck if you do so.

Now I had better write about a few news matters that I trust are of interest to you.

IS $5.7 BILLION REASONABLE

I am sure that you recall that, back in September, the price for the proposed Government border crossing between Windsor and Detroit was set at around $5.7 billion. That seems to be a pretty high cost considering that the cost by the Ambassador Bridge Company is around the $1 billion mark with only about $500 million of it being required these days.

Here is one interesting comment that was made:

“Duncan said an outside review suggested the final price would have been more than $6.2 billion if the Canadian government had decided not to partner with a private-sector consortium and foot the entire bill itself.” (Canadian Press, Windsor Star, September 29, 2018) 

That was a bit strange to me. I thought that the stories I had read in the past suggested that the private Company bridges that were to be built were more expensive than those that could have been built and run instead by the Governments. In any event, I saw this story recently which seems to confirm that:

“Contracted work at MDOT cost Michigan an extra $90M, study says

An analysis by a University of Michigan researcher has found that the state spent $90 million more to hire private contractors for engineering and design work than it would have if it had maintained that work in-house over just one three-year period…

“It really shocked us on the amount of money spent on the private consultants. It’s hard to imagine how that money was justified” (Eric D. Lawrence, Detroit Free Press, February. 15, 2019) 

DOCTORS GET MORE MONEY

I am sure that doctors will be very pleased with the decision made with respect to the money they are supposed to be receiving from the Ontario Government:

“An arbitrator has awarded Ontario doctors a new contract in a ruling that puts no hard cap on the physician services budget, a decision that comes after a years-long fracture in doctors’ relationship with the government.

Placing such a restriction on payments to doctors for publicly insured services would be unfair, arbitrator William Kaplan wrote in the decision released Tuesday.” (CANADIAN PRESS, February 20, 2019) 

I wonder what this is going to do for doctors now. I believe that a number of them have reduced the amount of work that they did because their salaries were effectively maximized by the “cap” placed on them. Will they now work longer and harder to earn a lot more or will they continue to work less because they are now more used to doing that?

I am pleased that it seems that both sides have accepted the decision that was made. As an “older” resident in Ontario, I like many others will require more appointments with medical people. I am pleased that it appears that there will be doctors around who can see us when we need their help:

“Alam said the arbitrator’s decision acknowledged that with an aging and growing population there will be more demand for services.

“What that means for patients is that every single physician service is fully funded by the government,” she said.”

Regretfully, I can see some significant difficulty arising as the Government has to consider ways to cut costs. Benefits that people received today may well be cut back in the future:

“a working group will be established to look into restricting inappropriate or overused physician services or payments to try to find $100 million “in changes” for the period of June 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020. For the next year it is to find a further $360 million.”

What that means may well give rise to new disputes in the future.