No good from Ford’s health care
“Open for business” means regulation is annoying, profit is paramount!
But perhaps the greatest threat is that the Tories think there’s nothing wrong with profiting from provision of healthcare. Of course if a profit margin is added to the provision of a service, its cost goes up. That means a health service could be priced beyond the ability of many to pay. And that’s a step toward undermining the very concept of universal healthcare.
Looking for efficiencies in the healthcare system might be a good thing. Re-organizing priorities might enable us to deal with the costs and needs of an aging society. But if the idea is to create profit opportunities for delivery of health-related services — as appears to be the direction the Ford government is headed — Ontarians should blow the whistle and let Ford’s free enterprisers know that’s just not on. Bruce Rogers, Lindsay, Ont. There is no good to come “for the people” from Doug Ford and Christine Elliott’s plans for Ontario’s healthcare, so it’s no wonder they have kept it top secret.
Under their reprehensible scheme, the entire Ontario Healthcare system will be run from Queen’s Park by a handful of handpicked bureaucrats and an appointed CEO. Allow that scenario to sink in for a second.
Ford and Elliott actually plan to dismantle our internationally-admired independent agencies such as Cancer Care Ontario and the Trillium Network for organ transplant. Currently, these integrated networks use evidencebased data to spot and resolve problems in patient care.
Going forward — if Ontarians allow it — cancer care and organ transplant policy/funding would be just two of many competing interests on the healthcare bureaucrat’s desk. Evidencebased decisions would be replaced by political calculation—what investment would make the political bosses look good?
The Coalition to Stop Ford is damned if we are going to let our healthcare system and province go down without a fight. Find us on Twitter (@coalition489) or Facebook. Join us here in Toronto or start your own chapter. Let’s rediscover the strength of coming together to resist an implacable bully. Remember: we may be in the belly of the beast but we DON’T have to be digestible. Patricia Chartier & Charnie Guettel, co- founders, Coalition to Stop Ford, Toronto Bigger is not always better! It frequently just causes more kayos, as outlined by Katherine Fierlbeck’s account of the Nova Scotia experience, which did not result in any evidence of saved money or efficiencies created. Cancer Care Ontario especially should never be messed with, as anyone in need of their services will attest to. Healthcare is too important to start making changes just for the sake of change. There was no mandate given to this government to do that unilaterally and, should they bulldoze ahead without extended consultation with all the players, their mandate will be short lived. Margaret Perrault, North Bay I get discouraged when I read undocumented and thoughtless opinions about privatization of healthcare. Let’s look at actual experience in the real world and try and LEARN. New Zealand tried privatization of parts of the healthcare years ago. What happened there? The problem with wait times is the shortage of people medical system, technicians and doctors particularly specialists.
What is the effect of privatization? Paying doctors more to work the private sector means they get paid more and they can work less so they see fewer patients.
So when they withdraw from the public system and it’s obvious even to Doug Ford supporters that as a result wait times will be even longer for regular joes who can’t afford expensive private care. The rich guys like Doug Ford can butt in at the front of the line. Dave Bonet, Newmarket I read with interest three articles on “Hallway Medicine” in Feb. 4th in the Toronto Star.
The editorial, which encouraged the provincial government to move ahead with the improvements needed for home care and community and longterm care, which is well known by the experts in the field. It also voices concerns that the government may have a hidden agenda and may not have come clean with Ontarians.
Bob Bell’s opinion piece on the conservative government’s bewildering, but not surprising, proposed legislation before solutions are identified only underscores the arrogance of this government; they can arrive at solutions without consultation or the need for issues to be identified.
The third article, another opinion piece by Adam Kassam, who is described as a “resident physician who writes about health care,” in which he forewarns that the broad “themes” the premier’s council envisions as the solutions to our hallway medicine will take years if not decades.
In attempting to understand the strategy the premier is using to find possible solutions, the assembling of a premier’s council appears to be, in light of secret legislation, a diversion designed to lure us into believing that there is logic to his method.
The makeup of the premier’s council says more about how things will unfold than anything the health minister or premier can state. In this regard, I disagree with Kassam’s remark that the composition of the premier’s council, “includes a healthy mixture of physicians, nurses, public-health experts and patient advocates.” In fact, the list of members is glaringly devoid of physician representation, particularly family physicians. Yes, there are five members who have MD degrees, but three of them are or have been long-term CEOs of hospitals and the other two have academic, rather than clinic, responsibilities. The other members include several other CEO’s who trained as nurses, patient advocates, a lawyer and other academics.
Given that the world’s most effective health systems are organized around family physicians, including Canada’s, and that about half of the pemier’s council are highly affiliated with hospitals, the dearth of these important medical professionals on this council speaks volumes. It is clear to me that doctors, particularly family physicians will bear the brunt of whatever medicine this government will mete out. It is not premature, given this governments earlier desire to walk away from an arbitration agreement, to suggest that this government’s arrogant behaviour will foment an atmosphere of mistrust and indignation among physicians — not a healthy environment to solve our problems. Leo Pavone, Scarborough