Health care for people, NOT profit

I’m willing to die on that hill fighting the brave fight for universal health care because the alternative is dying because health care is unaffordable or worse yet, in a private for-profit LTC home.

Ontarians have spoken, and over 99 per cent want NO privatization of public hospital services.

Today, Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) representatives were at Queen’s Park. They told the Ford government, in no uncertain terms, that there is no public support for the privatization of universal hospital services in Ontario.

Throughout the month of May, Ontarians were asked to vote online, at advance polls, and in-person on May 26^th and 27^th in a citizen referendum.

The question was simple, ‘Do you want our public hospital services to be privatized to for-profit hospitals and clinics? Yes or No.’

Across the province 386,068 votes were cast. 378,727 were NO – a resounding 98 per cent of voters do not want public hospital services to be privatized and run by for-profit corporations with over inflated chief executive officer (CEO) salaries and share holder dividends.

Here’s a sampling of results: Halton 99 per cent; London 98 per cent; Windsor and Essex County 99 per cent, Sault St. Marie 99 per cent; Simcoe County 99 per cent; Northwestern Ontario 99 per cent; Hamilton 98 per cent; Kingston 98 per cent and it was the same right across the province.

The citizen referendum was a response to Bill 60, Your Health Care Act, that expands for-profit health care in Ontario by allowing an undefined range of procedures and services to be carried out in new facilities called ‘integrated community health services centres.’

Privatized public health services has a track record of poorer patient access – aka longer wait time; lower standards of safety; and worse outcomes for patients at a greater overall cost to tax payers and individuals.

Simultaneously, these private day hospitals  open the door to corruption and conflict of interest – much like Ontarians experienced with the privatization of long-term care and home care.

Minden’s hospital is slated to close Monday apparently due to labour shortages. Those labour shortages are a direct result of Bill 124, Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations (2019), that capped public sector wage increases to one per cent – that includes nurses, personal support workers, and hospital cleaners.

There is a growing list of hospitals slated to have either their emergency room or entire hospital closed. Most are in small, rural areas where they are desperately needed and where easy surgeries like cataract, hip and knee surgeries supplement hospital services and tougher surgeries.

Bill 124 has driven some nurses from the profession while others have transitioned to private for-profit clinics and nursing agencies which are not bound by Bill 124 and can offer incentives and higher wages.

Those perks will undoubtably come to an abrupt end should Ford manage to privatize health care across the board. And, those nurses who abandoned the public system will undoubtably find themselves making closer to minimum wage once the entire health care system is privatized simply because corporate head office champions increased profits and dividends over workers wages, safety and rights.

But that’s hardly a surprise, because corporate management has no allegiance to workers and the universe usually has a pay back for scab workers who choose not to stand in solidarity with their union sisters and brothers. It’s just those scabs further undermine the system by jumping ship instead of standing up and fighting to protect universal health care and fighting to improve workers’ wages and conditions.

Ford had a plan to destroy the public health care system so he could present it on a platter to corporate associates to devour. He starved the public health care system of funding – those were our tax dollars and much of that money was provided by the federal government. He underpaid essential staff. He under staffed public hospital diagnostics and operating rooms, while simultaneously allowing the expansion of existing for-profit clinics to do easy surgeries and diagnostics siphoning away vital nursing staff and doctors from the public system.

While Ford claims that these for-profit clinics are temporary – they are not. They are in fact long-term contracts starting at five years that will be extended until they’re ingrained in health care making it impossible to get rid of them once the backlog of diagnostics and surgeries is solved. This bait and switch will privatize the core of our public hospital services and it will be irreversible.

All you have to do is look at long-term care (LTC) to see how this is going to play out. Private for-profit LTC homes experienced much higher death rates during COVID – often from dehydration, starvation, and neglect – than non-profit or municipal facilities. The army even had to be deployed to private LTC homes which were chronically understaffed even in pre-COVID times. The soldiers saw abominable conditions inside those private for-profit facilities. Yet, Ford is issuing some of the worst offending private LTC facilities expanded 30-year contracts.

Ford could choose to maximize existing hospital infrastructure instead of closing facilities only to turn around and spend tax dollars to build brand new facilities for private for-profit corporations to use as clinics and day hospitals.

Ford could choose to properly fund and staff the operating rooms we already have. He could choose to keep them open past 3:30 pm weekdays and open them on weekends for publicly funded surgeons and doctors to use. He could also choose to pay cleaners to make sure the rooms are ready for use when needed.

Instead, he is closing surgeries, emergency rooms, maternity wards, and entire hospitals.

Ford promised during the election that Ontarians would never have to pay for health care with their credit card. Then, why are existing private clinics already illegally extra-bill patients and routinely upselling medically unnecessary services to patients?

Our tax dollars built these private clinics and private hospitals, so the infrastructure belongs to the people.

Our tax dollars subsidize the surgeries performed by doctors working outside of the public system. But why are public tax dollars being diverted into profits that end up in the pocketbooks of greedy doctors, CEOs and shareholders rather than into patient care?

Seems to me these private facilities need to be taken back by the people! Make them not-for-profit clinics run by a board and overseen by a local public hospital.

That would lead to patient health trumping private wealth – and I like that.

We will all need to access health care at some time. The universal health care system was designed and put in place so that anyone needing health care could get it regardless of income or geographical location.

The OHC has proven that 98 per cent of Ontarians support the universal health care system ushered in by Tommy Douglas. The referendum is not the end of the fight to save pubic health care, it is only the beginning.

I’m willing to die on that hill fighting the brave fight for universal health care because the alternative is dying without health care because it’s unaffordable or worse yet, in a private for-profit LTC home.

I hope you are willing to join me – if you’re not willing to fight for yourself, then do it for your kids or your grand kids because you may have the money, or insurance, to pay your health expenses, but honestly, do they?

Learn more about what’s at stake by taking this short Canadian Health Coalition quiz about the state of health care in Canada:

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