There are too many people who want to not only decry the situation in Ontario’s healthcare system but also decry any proposed solutions.

That’s what is happening now with the Ford government’s proposals to shore up a system we’ve been told is on the verge of collapse.

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When not attacking the government’s plans as bringing “American-style healthcare” to Ontario, an outright fallacy, they are attacking plans for freeing up hospital beds.

Ford’s plans for freeing up hospital beds is being met with an even higher degree of fear mongering. You would think he was proposing to put granny out on an ice floe instead of looking to move patients from hospital to long-tern care.

There are a record number of patients sitting in acute care hospital beds — 5,930 according to the Ontario Hospital Association — who, according to their doctors, don’t need hospital care any longer.

Yet due to our system, these people are either waiting to go to their “preferred home” or haven’t been processed yet. When there is a shortage of hospital beds, especially heading into flu season and an expected resurgence of COVID cases this fall, leaving people in hospital beds while they wait for a preferred home is the wrong move.

“Hospital beds weren’t made for long-term care patients,” Premier Doug Ford said in the legislature Thursday noting that these 5,930 alternative level of care patients are clogging up the system and even delaying surgeries. “The policy is absolutely necessary. It will free up 2,500 beds.”

That policy would see the province offer people space in other long-term care homes on a temporary basis until the patient’s preferred home opens up. As it stands now, there are cases of people spending well over a year in a hospital bed because their preferred home has no space.

The plan makes sense, but the opposition New Democrats and Liberals are fear mongering.

“Cruelty is not a solution,” NDP Leader Peter Tabuns said.

He’s right, cruelty is not a solution but this plan is not cruel. It offers appropriate care in a home rather than in a hospital bed which isn’t the right place for these patients.

Liberal leader John Fraser, meanwhile, is trying to scare people over how far away patients may be placed from family and friends. Speaking in Toronto, he used the example of someone from the Ottawa suburb or Orleans being put in a home in Stittsville.

“That’s not going to work, that’s going to hurt people,” Fraser said.

He must have been relying on Toronto reporters not knowing that this is a simple 30 minute drive, hardly a burden.

The proposals being discussed of putting people 300 km away from home in Northern Ontario do sound harsh until you realize that is often the distance to a proper hospital. Wawa, which has a small 10-bed, acute-care centre is 330 km from Timmins, 478 km from the Thunder Bay and 530 km from Sudbury where they might already be transferred for a higher level of hospital care.

It’s sadly the reality in the north.

The Ford government needs to provide the public with more details and be upfront, they should also stop rushing this bill. That said, this is a good policy proposal that could fix a long standing problem that previous government’s paid lip service to without bothering to fix.

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