A fresh report from Ontario Health Coalition explains why private health clinics aren’t helping the public.
SAULT STE. MARIE – With the provincial government putting money into private MRI and surgical clinics, publicly funded facilities like Sault Area Hospital and others across Ontario remain inactive for hours each day.
Even with $155 million allocated for private MRI, CT, and endoscopy facilities by 2025, the only MRI machine at the local hospital stays unused for up to eight hours overnight daily – a pattern seen in hospitals throughout Ontario.
“First they had to put out bidding that would not be necessary, but for the privatization,” Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, shared in an interview with Village Media. “Then they had to build these redundant MRIs and operating rooms when we have them existing in every part of Ontario – underused.”
This is just one of many points Mehra discusses in her latest report titled Bait and switch: How the Ford government’s private clinics are taking away from local public hospitals, lengthening wait times & threatening public medicare. She argues that the government’s push for private clinics hasn’t really improved access to healthcare while causing many people to pay out of pocket for unnecessary treatments.
“We’re now five years in since the Ford government announced its plans to privatize what are really the core services of our public hospitals – the surgeries and diagnostic imaging – and we can now see what the results are,” she said.
“I think the Ford government really has to answer some very concrete questions about what’s happened here.”
While Premier Doug Ford has previously stated that residents will pay “with their OHIP card, never their credit card” at private clinics, this report found that patients have been intentionally upsold on unnecessary procedures during privately run cataract surgeries – sometimes leaving with bills as high as $8,000.
“Everything you need for cataract surgery is covered by OHIP,” Mehra emphasized.
“People shouldn’t be put in a position where they’re being manipulated into paying thousands of dollars because they think that their surgery will have poorer outcomes if they don’t or because they’re just plain lied to.”
For those unable to afford these bills or who live in northern or rural areas where there are very few private clinics available, long wait times which were meant to be addressed by private clinics have only made access easier for certain individuals.
The report mentions a study by the Canadian Medical Association showing that between 2017 and 2022, cataract surgeries increased by 22 percent among those in higher economic brackets while dropping by 8.5 percent among those in lower brackets.
Apart from concerns about fairness, Mehra also believes that funds used to create private clinics could’ve been better spent within the public system.
“All of us are waiting longer for wait times to be addressed because literally it’s taken years just to get these clinics up and running,” Mehra noted.
“I think it’s irrefutable that everyone is experiencing longer wait times due to all this wasted time and attempts at spending money on privatizing.”
She also highlights how funding for public hospitals hasn’t kept up with inflation lately. According to her, investments in private health facilities have created competition against a public system that’s understaffed and often underutilized – with many operating rooms and MRI machines sitting idle more often than not.
Although funding for public hospitals reached $27.5 billion in 2025-26 while investments into private clinics only amounting to hundreds of millions seems significant, Mehra asserts this funding could nonetheless support public healthcare more effectively than a privatized approach can offer.
“The number of services that money could buy in public hospitals is substantial. I realize overall spending figures in public hospitals are on a totally different scale but it’s still quite a bit of money simply funneled over into private clinics,” she said.
“I think it’s crucial that this costs more for everyone involved without actually being accessible geographically or financially across most parts of Ontario… so it’s not benefiting anyone.”
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