QUEEN’S PARK – Official Opposition NDP MPP Peter Tabuns (Toronto—Danforth) provided the following statement following the Conservatives’ latest announcement to prioritize expensive private surgical and diagnostic clinics over Ontario’s strained public health care system:
“Today’s announcement does nothing to address the growing wait times in our hospitals; it makes no sense to divert funding and attention away from public hospitals where staff are already trained to deliver these services.
“The Conservatives are gifting private facilities that charge patients three times more for the very same services, all while public surgical facilities sit with the lights off.
“Things will keep getting worse unless Ford’s government faces reality and establishes safe staffing ratios, stops fighting Bill 124 in court, and caps the use of private nursing agencies which are putting immense financial pressures on our public hospitals.”
QUICK FACTS
- The Investigative Journalism Foundation has found that "Doug Ford’s donors keep benefitting from his private health care push”
- Experts say the Conservative plan to expand for-profit health care is more likely to increase wait times—not reduce them
- For-profit clinics charge the government two or three times more than public hospitals for the same surgeries
- One for-profit clinic charged the government $1,264 for each cataract operation, while hospitals charged $508 per procedure. The lobbyist for this clinic is none other than former Conservative Health Minister Christine Elliott
- Ontario’s Liberals started the province down the road towards fully privatized healthcare when they broke their 2003 campaign promise and reduced the number of services provided under OHIP in favour of for-profit health care.