Province blamed for health-care woes
Niagara residents are feeling impact ‘privatization scheme,’ say local coalition members
While hospital systems across Ontario are facing budget deficits and struggling with staff vacancies, including Niagara Health, a new report by Ontario Health Coalition says funding public health-care facilities desperately need is instead being handed to private for-profit clinics.
Niagara Health Coalition chair Sue Hotte said the report released Wednesday — called “Robbing the public to build the private: The Ford government’s hospital privatization scheme” — accuses the provincial government of intentionally creating a crisis in public health care.
“This has been very well-planned from the get-go,” Hotte said at a media conference at Welland Civic Square.
She said the report, based on a year-long study looking at hospitals across Ontario, determined the province created that crisis by underfunding public health-care services at less than the inflation rate, and by bringing in Bill 124 — legislation that is now being repealed after twice being deemed unconstitutional — that worsened staffing shortages.
Hotte said the government then brought in legislation focused on for-profit clinics and made “sure that they’re funded well over what hospitals are getting and at the same time.”
As a result, she said, hospitals are coping with budget deficits, including Niagara Health, which expects to be about $12 million in the red by the end of its fiscal year, and with about 1,600 unfilled staff vacancies.
“And then we have a government that says we have a huge crisis, and the solution is privatize. Have forprofit clinics, make sure that pharmacists are able to give injections and get paid for it more than the hospitals and doctors are getting.”
The report said private clinics are seeing provincial funding increases of as much as 300 per cent, while public hospitals are funded at the lowest rate of all provinces.
In response to the report, Hannah Jensen, a spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones, said the provincial government under the leadership of Premier Doug Ford “has made record investments in our publicly funded health-care system.”
“While the Ontario Health Coalition continues to be ideologically opposed to any action our government is taking to build a more connected health-care system, we will continue our work that is providing you with better access to care, closer to home,” she said.
Hotte said Niagara has been feeling the impact of the “privatization scheme,” such as nightly closures of urgent-care centres in Fort Erie and Port Colborne, while surgeries are no longer performed in evenings and on weekends at Welland hospital.
“Our area has been under the gun since the mid-1990s,” Hotte said.
Heather Kelley, from Fort Erie Healthcare SOS, said “people are so disgruntled by the system and the lack of availability to get the help they need.”
She said the impact is aggravated for people who don’t have transportation and “can’t afford to call an Uber or a taxi to take them to the hospital, let alone bring them back home again.”
Hotte said Ontarians are feeling the impact of increased privatization, being asked to pay thousands of dollars in fees.
St. Catharines resident Margaret Unruh said her mother-in-law required surgery to remove cataracts from both eyes in 2020, and was referred to a private clinic. She said her mother-in-law was told to write a cheque for $570, on top of charges of $110 per eye for special lenses.
Unruh said a few years later, her nephew required the care of ophthalmologists at a private clinic for an emergency procedure. She said as soon as she walked in the door, she was told it would cost $185 for an emergency appointment.
Although she said the doctor told her the fee would be covered by OHIP, Unruh remained worried about others who might not have someone advocating for them.
Patients, Hotte said, should have the right to access care without user fees or extra billing.
“Our taxes fund our public health system and it should not be used to fund for-profit clinics,” Hotte said.
Jansen, however, listed numerous investments in public health care the Progressive Conservatives have made.
She said health-care budgets have been increased by more than $18 billion since 2018, “$80 billion into the system this year alone.”
“This includes a four per cent increase to the hospital sector and is the total health-care budget of almost every other province and territory combined,” she said, referencing data from Canadian Institute of Healthcare Information.
She said the government is continuing to take action “to build on the progress we have achieved including having a record-breaking year in 2023,” such as adding 17,000 new nurses and 2,400 new physicians, achieving the shortest wait times for surgeries in Canada.
She said the province also eliminated a 180,000-person backlog for PAP (cervical screening) tests, “while returning the surgical backlog to pre-pandemic levels and making historic investments in pediatric and primary care.”
“This is on top of the $1-billion investment we have made through the Surgical Recovery Fund to allow hospitals to utilize operating rooms on weekends and weekdays to complete even more surgeries,” Jensen added.