Back then, the Tories wanted to get out of the business of deciding how and where health care was delivered. They wanted to get the department out of operational decisions.
From Our blueprint for Newfoundland and Labrador (2003):
Effectively Managing Health Care Services
The Department of Health and Community Services spends too much time micro-managing the health system, and too little time articulating policy. As a result, health care suffers from vague direction and uncertain authority, and managers continue to apply patchwork solutions to a system that is becoming more unmanageable every day.
In 2009, the cabinet decides what communities will have laboratory and x-ray service and the minister responsible tries to claim that the health regions made the choices when – quite obviously – they didn’t.
Odd that the people who had the right answer, consistently pick the wrong answer.
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