Horwath and health-care whistleblower deserve praise
Andrea Horwath has come under heavy fire in recent days for releasing government documents outlining a major overhaul of the Ontario health-care system and that hint of a greater private-sector role in this critical area.
The Ontario NDP leader is “fearmongering,” “intentionally raising confusion” and invoking a “privatization bogeyman” by suggesting the Ford government wants to open the door to more private health care, her critics charge.
At the same time, the government has fired the bureaucrat who leaked the secret documents to the NDP.
In truth, Horwath doesn’t deserve the criticism and the whistleblower didn’t deserve their fate. Instead, both deserve praise for their actions.
That’s because the public health-care system needs defenders like Horwath and the whistleblower, who are willing to speak up at a time when advocates of private health care are gaining more traction in government circles.
It’s especially true when the loudest voices for “reform” are often those who are pushing the hardest for more twotier health care in which patients with money or private health insurance can get quicker medical treatment.
Clearly, our health-care system needs improving. It’s underfunded, overmanaged and increasingly strained to meet the demands of a growing and aging population.
But allowing more private, for-profit health care in Ontario, which is focused not on a patient’s medical need but rather on their ability to pay to get to the head of the line, is not a good solution.
In fact, research in Germany, Switzerland and Australia has found that allowing private payments for health care have actually resulted in increasing, not decreasing, medical wait times for most patients who use the public system.
In Canada, we have a prime of example of how a profit-driven private clinic is seeking to greatly expand twotier health care here, as well as pushing governments to allow extra billing by doctors.
Mariel Schooff is a 72-year-old woman who now lives in Chatham, Ont. Back in 2003, she and her husband were living in Vancouver.
She had suffered for years from severe sinus problems. Then she met Amin Javer, an ear, nose and throat specialist, who told her it would take up to five years to have a special operation in a public hospital, but he could operate almost immediately at the private False Creek Healthcare Centre, where he also worked.
“I was told I would have to pay $5,000 for the operation,” she said in an interview this week from her home in Chatham. “It was a lot of money back then, but the only other option was waiting five years. I couldn’t wait that long. We got a loan from the bank, but when we got to the clinic a receptionist said we had to pay $6,125. We had brought a cheque for $6,000, so we had to use our Visa card to pay the last $125.”
The B.C. government said she should get her money back because Javer had also billed the B.C. health system for the operation. Ever since then she’s been involved in a years-long court case trying to get her money.
Although her operation was successful, Schooff is a huge supporter of public health care. She’s deeply concerned by what she sees happening under Premier Doug Ford.
“Private health care isn’t about choice, as some people argue,” she says. “Poor people don’t have a choice. They can’t afford to go to the head of the line. There are many of us, especially older people, who can’t cough up the money.
“If Ford goes ahead with his plans, then I feel we will be on a slippery slope toward American-style medicine.”
Schooff said she is glad the Queen’s Park staffer gave the secret documents to the NDP. “That person deserves a medal,” she said.
As the whistleblower and Horwath have shown, it’s critical for people who support our public health-care system to be constantly vigilant against those who would, intentionally or not, weaken it.
Medicare must be defended. It also must be reformed, but in a way that benefits everyone, not just those who can afford to pay or those whose motives are largely profit-driven.