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Privatization scheme has few winners
Posted: September 13, 2022
(September 12, 2022)
By: Paul Kahnert, Rabble
Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones addressing the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) on August 17, 2022. Credit: CPAC
Ford is following the usual Tory script to privatize healthcare in Ontario. First, as John Snobelen of the Harris government said, “you have to create a crisis.” The COVID crisis is tailor made for privatizing healthcare.
Taking advantage of or creating a crisis is only the first part of the plan. Then they will claim and exaggerate that the public system is broken and we need private sector “innovation” to fix it. They are already making this claim. Health minister Sylvia Jones, has claimed “decades of inaction” has caused the healthcare crisis as well as constantly repeating “the status quo isn’t working”. The facts are that decades of underfunding and cuts to pay for revenue shortfalls, caused by Tory tax cuts, is the untold truth about the healthcare crisis.
As well as endlessly using the word “innovation,” watch for the promise of “increased efficiencies.” They will then make a big deal out of the word “choice.” People should have the right to “choose” their healthcare provider and choose how they get their healthcare needs met. The reason why we made rich people use our hospitals through universal public healthcare was so that healthcare would be good for everyone!
It was once unthinkable that our non-profit public power hydro system would be turned into a for-profit system. While making the false claim that the public system was bankrupt and endlessly promising “lower rates and increased efficiencies,” the Mike Harris Conservatives of the ‘90s turned every publicly owned hydro commission in the province into a for-profit corporation. Everyone knows how those promises worked out.
This is the plan they used to mislead the people and conduct the heist of Ontario’s Hydro system. To this day no one has been held accountable for that failed scheme. Now the theft of our beloved healthcare system is going on right before our eyes.
Tax cuts, cutting red tape and “innovation” make for nice soundbites, but make us all much poorer.
The Conservatives are largely to blame for this crisis that they created with funding cuts to pay for tax cuts. When you think about it, it should be illegal. It is important to note that the tax cuts and cuts to healthcare made by the Harris Conservatives resulted in the loss of over 10,000 nurses. It was a loss the healthcare system never recovered from.
Now Ford is going to fix a crisis they created with privatization? Worldwide the record of privatization is dismal.
Just how are private owners going to staff their hospitals with doctors and nurses? There is only one way, pay a premium to lure them away from the public system and then charge more so they can make a profit off of them.
Will care or profit be the primary concern? As Peter Tabuns interim leader of the Ontario NDP said, “private owners are in it to make a buck.”
Since 1980, the wealthiest people and their corporations have successfully lobbied Conservative governments for massive tax cuts in the multiple billions.
What we really need to do to fix our healthcare system is to reverse tax cuts. Reversing tax cuts on the wealthy and their corporations is not raising taxes, it is restoring funding to build and pay for a civil society.
This scheme to privatize healthcare only benefits wealthy investors and makes all the rest of us losers. We have decades of proof that public universal healthcare works very well for everyone, when properly funded. How can Ford justify asking for more money from the Federal government, when he’s constantly spending billions on tax and fee cuts?
History will judge us poorly If we don’t act to stop the theft of our healthcare system. Contact the Ontario Health Coalition to find out how you can help stop this nonsense.
https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/
Our very lives depend on it
