Invitation only? I smell a B.C.Liberal rat. If Campbell is really wanting to know the truth it must be open to the public and not subject to hand picking contributors. This will be yet another false promise of real discorse. Just like the phoey "most open and transparent governement ever". Mistruthes without even an attempt to provide a smattering of truth.

Did I miss a memo? When did Forrest Gump become our Premier? $10 MILLION DOLLARS?? Here's my suggestion to our Martini swilling Premier.....Put the damn $10 million into the healthcare system? Where did he get this brilliant idea from? The Cameron Street Bridge Indecision Society of Prince George maybe? Geez, just when I thought Campbell hadn't thrown a screw into anything lately, and he comes up with this? God help us all.

We can say all we want, any ideas from the "uninvited" will go by deaf ears and filed away under "G" for garbage.

All the jerk has to do is read the papers and watch the news on TV. $ 10 million bucks? What a moron! Double DUH!!

i'm a new RN at PGRH and i work on the surgical unit. i'd like to be "invited" to these meetings because i'd let fly with what's on my mind and what happens at my worksite every shift. even still, i doubt the premier would really listen because no one knows what it's like to do my job except people that actually do it.
this post is in response as well to the article about "code gridlocks" being called for PGRH emerg. what really gets me is that code gridlock is only for emerg and it is considered solved when the extra paitents are shipped out to doubly occupy single rooms and patient lounges everywhere. working short staffed with two extra patients to your unit sometimes means one RN to nine patients. people just have NO IDEA how much work this turns out to be. these are really sick people, and this level of staff:patient ratio is just not safe.
also, it is well known that the entire fourth floor of PGRH is administration offices, not beds. also they recently closed a pod of beds and i believe they are putting offices there. would we be having code gridlock problems if there were more beds to host these ill people? maybe a higher staff:patient ratio would draw more staff, which is a whole other issue...

This rather stupid statement from the premier that health care will eat up 71% of the provincial budget by 2017 is really misleading, and maybe even deliberately deceptive. It shows just how stupid Campbell thinks voters are. I suggest to you that the cost of health care in BC will remain in the neighborhood of 8.5% - 9% of the gross provincial product for the forseeable future, as it has for the past 40 years, and that currently equates to about 42%, or so, of the Provincial budget. The actual percentage depends on what else the government decides to spend tax revenue on.

The only way it will increase to 15% of the GPP, which equates with being 70% of the Provincial budget, is if the politicians in charge decide to spend that much. I would also note that 15% of its GDP is about what the US spends on health care(actually about 16%), so perhaps this is a clue as to where Campbell is wanting to lead us, and he has made an unconscious comparison with his eventual goal of an American style, free enterprise, for-profit health care consuming 15% of the wealth of the province.

How much more effective it would be if health care were to remain under public control, but funded at a slightly higher level, say 9% - 9.5% of the GPP, a figure which is well within the capability of the province's ability to pay, but which would enable more beds, more health care workers, more surgeries, and so on.

For those who are interested in such matters, a ratio based on a percentage of the gross provincial product allows year to year comparisons of the funding of health care without having to do corrections due to inflation and population increase. The reality is that there has been little change in the amount of the province's wealth directed at health care for decades. It has always been slightly underfunded, which is why I have advocated for a 0.5-1% GPP increase in the amount for 20 years, without being heard of course.

Me? I don't care. As long as it is free. La dee da , dee da. I will now put my head back in the sand and worry about health care when I need it. Typical attitude, methinks.