We can’t trust Ford and Jones to fix health care
Tories bleeding the public system dry to fund private clinics
“Health money not the answer” is the headline of a Jan. 16 letter that appeared in The Spectator. I suggest that this writer take a look at the math of what the government is proposing — 4,800 cataract surgeries in private facilities at $605 per surgery is about $2.9 million. Alternatively, read the Ontario Newsroom (Ford’s bullhorn) dated Jan. 16 which states the government is investing $18 million to fund the various medical procedures in for profit centres. The government is going to spend more money on health care in Ontario, but not in a way Ontarians might want.
Staffing shortages of all types plague Ontario’s publicly funded health-care system. In the case of nurses, estimates of shortages range from 30,000 to 40,000 nurses. Premier Doug Ford and Minister Sylvia Jones regularly state they are hiring nurses, but they are not making any meaningful headway to deal with the shortage. Bill 124 (which capped the salaries of nurses) was a deterrent to filling the nursing shortage in Ontario. To make matters worse, Ford committed the government to appealing a recent Ontario court decision that struck down that legislation. This is a clear signal to any nurse that Ontario is not the place to work.
Ontario’s plan to reduce wait times for surgeries and procedures is going to seriously damage the publicly funded health-care system in Ontario. It appears that much of the medical staffing that is needed to perform the surgeries and procedures in these centres will come from our already overtaxed hospitals. Ford said on the news that they will be the same doctors that work in our hospitals. If it is the same staff, why not just fund the procedures and surgeries at the public hospitals and save taxpayer dollars by not also financing private profit?
The CBC recently reported that the private clinics will get $100 to $150 per cataract surgery more from the Ministry of Health than a publicly funded hospital would receive for the same procedure. What other services at these centres will be funded at higher rates than those same services provided at publicly funded hospitals? Ford waves the Ontario health card and says Ontarians will pay for procedures with it. In reality, Ontarians are going to finance for-profit health care with their tax dollars as they use their health card. Ford and Jones need to direct these funds (and more) into the publicly-funded health care system rather than continuing to bleed it dry.
The changes Ford and Jones have put forward will be permanent. Ontario
tax dollars are going to fund significantly more health services in the for-profit sector. Can this be changed? Likely not. Ford and Jones are reinforcing these plans with legislation. Ontarians know how that type of deal turned out with Mike Harris’ sale of Highway 407 back in 1999 — Ontarians are stuck with paying obscene tolls to a profitable company until 2098.
Can we trust Ford and Jones (and locally MPPs Donna Skelly, Neil Lumsden and Sam Oosterhoff) with our publicly funded healthcare system? I think not. Look at the devastating flip-flop the government recently made to the utter detriment of our valued Greenbelt. We cannot trust this government to fix the publicly funded health-care system.
It is not appropriate to place the entire blame for the state of Ontario’s publicly funded health-care system on the provincial government. The blame lies with all politicians at the federal and provincial levels. Canadians place an extremely high value on the health-care safety net. It is high time for all politicians to stop the rhetoric, hang up their entrenched positions, forget about federal-provincial power struggles and come together for the common good to solve this complex problem and build back up a publicly funded health-care system that Canadians want and deserve.