Health care suffering under budget cuts
Horwath: centralized decision-making endangers services
The Ontario government is taking a cut first, plan later approach to health care funding, says NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
“This government seems to like to make these big announcements, then worry about the details later,” she said Thursday, at a town hall-style event in St. Catharines. “But when you’re talking about public health … that’s dangerous and irresponsible. We need to design a health care system that has people at the centre of every decision.”
Horwath said the system is already strained from underfunding, prior closures of smaller hospitals and a gaping need for more and better care for people suffering mental health issues or addictions.
Her stop in Niagara comes on the heels of a spate of funding reductions or eliminations by the Ford government. She spoke before about 175 people.
Mergers and the introduction of large umbrella organizations to make funding decisions will hurt local care, she said.
She cited the creation of Ontario Health, an organization that will swallow up 20 smaller agencies including 14 Local Health Integration Networks , as well as Cancer Care Ontario and eHealth.
For example, health care funding decisions previously made by Niagara’s LHIN would instead be made by the central agency, likely based in Toronto. “Nobody at Queen’s Park or the ministry of health is going to get out the map and look at how the communities in Niagara are situated” when planning decisions are made, she said.
Horwath also called for better care for people dealing with mental health issues or addictions.
She was questioned about an article on the front page of Niagara newspapers Thursday — the story of a local man who twice pleaded to be admitted to hospitals in St. Catharines and Hamilton, claiming he was suicidal and feared he would hurt others, but was sent home each time. The man ended up taking his own life, at Niagara Falls.
That’s “unacceptable,” she said, noting the number of suicide incidents reported locally at the Burgoyne Bridge in St. Catharines.
Horwath said the NDP would create a new, separate ministry to oversee care for mental health and addictions. “We shouldn’t be in a situation where people are having to go to a bridge, they should have the services and support they need to deal with their mental health crisis.”
She said health care planning has to focus on local needs to be effective, but said she feared that will be lost as the Tories continue to reorganize the system. “You have to identify that these are communities that have specific characteristics, to be able to then plan the health system around those characteristics,” she said. “That’s why when you lose smaller community hospitals, or some of their services … this is what negatively affects people.
“Especially low-income people who don’t have a car they can just hop into and drive to the next community or two communities over.”
She also warned the province is considering changing the definition of disability, as to who qualifies to receive Ontario Disability Support Program funding. Horwath said the province’s definition is more broad than the federal one, but that it is considering adopting Ottawa’s definition. That, she said, “would cut tens of thousands of people off ODSP.
“We’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop,” she said. “We know something is going on. They floated this idea of a new definition, but we don’t know what it’s going to look like.”