BRIEFING NOTE & FACT SHEETS: Health Care Privatization Fact Sheets & Information

Posted: August 28, 2024

(August 28, 2024)

Below is a quick summary of the key issues. Here are some fact sheets and additional information:

Why for-profit privatization is a terrible idea

We don’t need to privatize.

Operating rooms in our public hospitals are closed evenings, weekends — sometimes even permanently — due to underfunding.
It is a choice by government not to fund & open the under-used operating rooms we already have in our public hospitals.
Even a few extra hours per day over 3 months would clear the backlog of patients waiting.

For-profit hospitals & clinics only take the fast, easy, profitable patients.

They also take their staff out of our local public hospitals.
They leave the complicated surgeries, such as cancer care, and riskier patients (eg. those with diabetes, are overweight, have COPD/heart arrhythmias etc.) to our public hospitals with less funding & staff to provide care.

For-profit clinics & hospitals routinely charge patients thousands of dollars on top of OHIP for needed surgeries & tests.

This “extra-billing” is illegal under the Canada Health Act which requires care to be provided without charge based on medical need — not our wealth, & which bans extra-billing. No government has been successful in controlling the for-profits.
It would require a whole new system to monitor, inspect and police them.
For-profit clinics also take profits by getting patients to pay for unneeded tests & extras.
Their prices are very high — often up to five times higher than OHIP costs.
For-profit privatization is a fatal threat to our cherished system of Canadian public health care for all & is more expensive.

Ontario funds our public hospitals at the lowest rate in Canada.

The Ford government has underspent the health care budget by $1.25 billion, even while patients are waiting,
our emergency departments & other vital services are closing, and our nurses & hospital staff are leaving by the thousands due to overwork, burnout & frustration.
This follows years of underfunding.
If the Ontario government funded our health care even to the average of Canada, they could resolve the crisis.

The Ford government’s hospital privatization plan is a “take away” from our local public hospitals.

It will be damaging to all public hospitals & particularly devastating to medium & smaller hospitals that lose surgeries, diagnostics, doctors, nurses & health professionals.