P.E.I. Health Coalition sounds alarm over privatization
Concerns about the province’s public health-care system moving towards the private sector have members of the P.E.I. Health Coalition worried.
A public meeting was held April 23 at Colonel Gray High School in Charlottetown to discuss the risks associated with the privatization of health care in P.E.I.
“The overall problem (with privatization) is that profit has to be the goal. It is the purpose of the business,” said Pat Armstrong, a research professor at York University, who was also the guest speaker at the public meeting.
While addressing the crowd of more than 50 people, she highlighted issues with for-profit care services. She said it pulls from the same pool of staff as the public sector, which makes it harder for the public sector to provide care. This then contributes to the labour force crisis.
She said many of these for-profit services are taking staff who have already been trained in the public system, but they are not providing any additional training themselves.
Despite receiving public money, these services have managed to escape public scrutiny by claiming the right to privacy that is necessary for competition and the right of ownership, she said.
“It's harder to get accountability for our money as more and more private equity is more and more involved, making following the money and finding out who to hold responsible even more difficult.”
Armstrong also said private health-care services do not necessarily provide better quality care at lower costs or alleviate the burden on the public health-care system, as many people believe. Rather, she told the crowd, such services can further fragment
the public health-care system, which is already struggling with fragmentation.
She told attendees at the meeting that instead of harping on the negative aspects of the public health-care system, they should focus on sharing numerous successful stories to promote a positive image of the system.
“Our health-care systems become invisible. And we need to make those good parts really visible. It's not perfect, and it's not perfectly equitable, and it is being undermined, in part by the bad stories that are told all the time, rather than the good stories,” she said.
“The bad stories give the for profits room to move in. We need to celebrate our public system, emphasizing its strengths, even while recognizing that there is always need for improvement and that it’s always under threat from those seeking to profit from care.”
Mary Boyd, chair of the P.E.I. Health Coalition and organizer of the public meeting, said that its role is to alert the public if it sees the health-care system being undermined.
She told Saltwire in an interview that a shift towards private health care means patients being billed through their credit cards rather than showing their health cards.
“That would really impact low-income people and everybody. As it is now, under the public system, the poorest person in Canada can stand side by side with the richest person and expect the same service. If you start promoting a system where the rich get preferential treatment over others, you will be showing your credit card because you'll be billed.”
During question period in the P.E.I. legislature on March 14, P.E.I.’S Health Minister, Mark Mclane, said a private clinic might help the province lower wait times for cataract surgeries.
Boyd said the cataract clinic suggestion made by the minister, along with the growing trend of doctors leaving the public health-care system to work for private companies, like Maple, along with the increasing use of travel nurses managed by private companies, are all indications that the public health-care system in P.E.I. is gradually becoming privatized.
“This is wrong, and it should never happen. And it should never be allowed to happen,” she said.
“If we don't stop it, we will pay down the road. And we believe, too, as a coalition, that if you start taking the taxpayers' money and the money available for public health, and you start paying it to for-profit organizations, there will never be enough money for good public health care and down the road, when the money runs out, you're going to start paying bills.”