To leave, manage or join list: https://listserv.yorku.ca/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=sdoh&A=1
From: OntarioHealthCoalition <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Ontario Health Coalition via OntarioHealthCoalition <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2022 10:39 AM
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [OHC] URGENT: Ford gov't announces private for-profit hospitals: TONIGHT 7 pm Emergency SummitOntario Health CoalitionTOP URGENCY:Ford Government Announces Plans to Bring inFor-Profit HospitalsEmergency Summit Tonight 7 p.m. by ZoomOn February 1, Doug Ford's Health Minister Christine Elliott announced plans to allow private clinics (called "Independent Health Facilities") operate private (for-profit) hospitals in Ontario. It is a bombshell announcement. It means, for the first time since the inception of OHIP, an Ontario government would bring in U.S.-style for-profit hospitals. Under Ontario law, new for-profit hospitals are currently banned and have been since 1973.
If this link doesn't work in your email, please see 0:38 second point here: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1998422595853
This plan is a disaster for our already-beleaguered public hospitals. The for-profits do not have ICUs. They don't run teaching hospitals. They don't have sound oversight and quality of care regimes. They run to take as much profit out of our health care as possible, just like the for-profit long-term care chain corporations have done. To maximize their profits they charge patients an array of user fees and extra bill patients on top of OHIP, undermining the foundational principle of public health care which is to be provided to all Canadians based on their medical need not their wealth. And, devastatingly, the for-profits take only the lightest, profitable surgeries and diagnostics - and the funding and staffing resources that go with them -- leaving our public hospitals with less funding and less staff to care for those with more complex care needs. It is a violation of our fundamental morals to mix medicine with profit.
This is just the latest in a litany of health care privatization by Ford. His government is midstream in giving away more than 18,000 long-term care beds in 30-year licenses to the same for-profit chain corporations responsible for the deaths of thousands of residents in their care, and who have stood in the way of inspections, regulations to protect residents, accountability and justice for those who have died in squalid conditions. Ford passed a law to privatize the last remaining public parts of home care under cover of the pandemic. He has contracted for-profit clinics to do COVID testing and has allowed them to charge patients for needed tests (at exorbitant rates ranging up to $400 per test). He has privatized vaccinations. He is planning billions in cuts to public services post-election, according to no less of an authority than the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario.
Tonight at 7 p.m. we launch the fightback. Every single one of us can help make a difference. Please do join us.
Please join if you care about Health Care Privatization, Long-Term Care Cuts, Hospitals, Home Care & Improving Care for Patients not Profits.
Help build an IRON RING around our public health care.
Thank you,
Natalie MehraExecutive Director
--
We are proud of the difference we make and we hope you are too. This work is only made possible by people who care like you. Please do become a member or donate. It matters!If you can, please CLICK HERE to donate or become a member.
Ontario Health Coalition15 Gervais Drive, Suite 201
Toronto, ON M3C 1Y8www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca
416-441-2502