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CUPE, Health Coalition protest surgery privatization with Trojan Horse at Oakville Hospital
Posted: November 13, 2024
(November 12, 2024)
By: Laura Steiner, The Milton Reporter
A 15-foot Trojan Horse replica appeared outside Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital recently.
CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE) and the Ontario Health Coalition deployed it as a symbol of their opposition to the Ford government’s plan to privatize hospital surgeries. The two organizations are urging the government to cancel its privatization efforts and instead invest in public hospitals.
“The Trojan Horse represents a gift, which, if accepted, threatens the recipient,” explained Sharon Richer, OCHU-CUPE’s secretary-treasurer.
“The false promise here is that privatizing surgeries is a solution to long waits. In fact, privatization redirects money and staff from public hospitals to private, for-profit clinics.”
“As a result, wait-times in the public system get longer as staff shortages lead to service closures. Meanwhile, these private clinics charge out-of-pocket costs, which are unaffordable for most people. Ultimately, they will reduce access based on need, lengthen wait times and weaken our public hospital system.”
Richer pointed to a recent Canadian Medical Association Journal study, which found that surgical rates for cataract procedures increased by 22 percent among Ontario’s wealthiest residents while decreasing by nine percent among the lowest-income earners. This pattern mirrors experiences in other countries with private surgery delivery, she noted, with patients in Ontario charged up to $8,000 at private clinics, according to Ontario Health Coalition research.
The coalition and union warn that these fees “are often manipulative and unethical, and in many cases are a flagrant violation of our public medicare laws.”
The Ford government has moved forward with expanding private service delivery traditionally provided in public hospitals, including cataract surgeries and diagnostic tests. This fall, new licenses will be issued to private clinics, which are expected to perform 100,000 MRIs and CT scans under government funding.
“Private for-profit clinics and hospitals are up to two to three times more expensive than public hospitals. The Ford government is taking our public tax funding for health care away from our local hospitals to give it to more costly for-profit clinics,” said Ontario Health Coalition Executive Director Natalie Mehra.
“Even worse, for-profit clinics threaten public medicare and cause hardship for patients, charging the elderly on pensions thousands of dollars unlawfully for needed surgeries and manipulating them to pay for unnecessary add-ons.”
The groups call on the government to boost investment in public hospitals. These hospitals already possess the infrastructure to expand services but need additional funding to address staffing shortages.
“Ontario now funds our public hospitals at the lowest rate in Canada, with the lowest staffing levels and bed capacity across the country,” said Richer.
She added, “The Ontario Conservatives are shifting more than a billion dollars per year away from our public hospitals to private for-profit clinics, hospitals, and staffing agencies.”
The groups propose increasing hospital beds and staffing over the next decade to meet the demands of Ontario’s aging and growing population and closing tax loopholes to generate the necessary revenue.
