Residents of Windsor-Essex who are worried about the rise of privatized healthcare in Ontario will gather for a rally on Saturday.
The Ontario Health Coalition is organizing a demonstration outside the office of Windsor-Tecumseh MPP Andrew Dowie.
This coalition, which has hosted similar events across the province, is urging Queen’s Park to prioritize funding for public hospitals over private clinics.
“The privatization [Premier Doug] Ford is undertaking is unprecedented,” read a release from the coalition. “Since the inception of public hospitals and the 1973 ban on private hospitals, no government has expanded private clinics like this. The majority of the new licenses are for private for-profit facilities, and a number of them are owned by for-profit chain corporations.”
The provincial government defends its expansion of private clinics for procedures like cataract surgery and orthopedic treatment, arguing that diverting these procedures from hospitals means patients won’t have to wait as long for necessary care.
However, the Coalition disagrees with this reasoning.
“If we don’t stop them, their own projected goal is to redirect 50 per cent of the surgeries from public hospitals to private [for-profit] facilities,” read the release. “The scale and scope of hospital privatization planned by Ford will undermine, perhaps fatally, our public hospital system.”
The rally starts at 1 p. m. on Saturday.
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