Well being care employees and advocates say nothing good can come out of a authorities plan to denationalise hospital surgical procedures, calling the plan “a Trojan horse.”
A 15-foot tall Malicious program is being introduced round Ontario, as unionized employees put strain on the Ford authorities to desert privatization plans and put that cash again into public hospitals.
The horse made a cease at Guelph Normal Hospital and St. Joseph’s Well being Centre Wednesday.
“We need all hands on deck to fight this privatization, and win this fight against our government,” mentioned Mark Zinger, a registered nurse at Guelph Normal and vp of CUPE Native 57, which represents registered sensible nurses, PSW’s, cleaners and different hospital employees.
Laws was handed final yr to broaden entry to non-public, for-profit clinics.
Zinger took goal at these clinics, calling them “unaffordable.”
“Not only are they charging patients out-of-pocket, but they are also charging the government far more than public hospitals for the same services,” he mentioned.
Based on the Canadian Institute for Well being Data, the fee for knee surgical procedure in a public hospital is about $10,000. At a non-public clinic, the fee is sort of thrice as a lot.
Zinger mentioned a non-public clinic within the GTA was given $1,264 by the federal government, per eye, for cataract surgical procedures, in comparison with $508 at public hospitals.
He mentioned the federal government will justify the sort of spending as making an attempt to deal with a surgical backlog. However he fired again and mentioned personal clinics don’t “magically create additional capacity.”
“They are not an add on, they’re a takeaway,” he mentioned, including the personal sector poaches employees from the general public sector, creating employees shortages and longer wait occasions within the course of.
He mentioned as staffing ranges worsen in public hospitals and authorities funding goes up in for revenue clinics, it creates unequal entry for sufferers, the place these with cash can leap the queue and get serviced.
“That is a dangerous precedent, and we can’t let this become a new normal in Ontario,” Zinger mentioned, including you solely want to have a look at well being care in the USA to see the “havoc” that personal clinics create.
“It’s increasing the wait times, it won’t alleviate the crisis in our hospitals, the crisis around staffing and the crisis around beds and really the crisis that the patients need in these public hospitals,” mentioned Sharon Richer, the secretary treasurer of the Ontario Council of Hospitals.
She referred to as the plan “deceptive” and “dangerous to our public hospitals.”
Richer added it’s going to create a two-tiered system, benefiting the rich, who can spend further to get medical providers faster.
So why the horse?
Richer mentioned it’s a “perfect” metaphor for the federal government’s plan.
“He’s talking to Ontarians, and he’s talking to them that it has been a gift that he’s giving us,” she mentioned.
In Greek mythology, the picket horse is accepted into town of Troy as a pretend gesture of peace throughout a conflict. At evening, Greek troopers contained in the horse got here out, opened the entrance gate and troopers destroyed town from the within to win the conflict.
Richer mentioned the plan isn’t a present in any respect, including it’s devastating the general public well being care system.
In response, a spokesperson for Well being Minister Sylvia Jones mentioned the province has made “record investments in our publicly funded healthcare system,” and touted the federal government’s funding of over $85 billion into the system this yr.
“We have increased our investment across the hospital sector by four per cent for a record two years in a row, we are getting shovels in the ground for over 50 hospital development projects across the province,” Hannah Jensen mentioned. “Over the past two years, we now have registered a document variety of new nurses, including 32,000 new nurses, with one other 30,000 finding out nursing at one in all Ontario’s schools or universities and since 2018, we now have added over 12,500 new docs to the healthcare workforce. However we aren’t stopping there.
“We have increased publicly funded diagnostic imaging capacity by an additional 97,767 MRI and 116,443 CT operating hours, adding 32,000 OHIP-covered cataract surgeries, eliminating a 180,000 person cervical cancer screening test backlog, and achieving some of the shortest wait times of any province in Canada, with nearly 80 percent of people receiving their procedure within clinically recommended target times.”
