Transcript:
And here’s what’s at stake for the people of Ontario because of Bill 60.
More costs for patients and more uncertainty about what those out of pocket costs might be.
Private clinic surgeries have cost taxpayers more than double what they would in the public system.
Right here in Canada, the data shows the provinces that have outsourced surgeries to for-profit clinics are waiting longer than they are even in Ontario.
It will poach the staff from our public health care system.
There’s no magic ‘poof’ of human resources. Shortages in hospitals will be made worse and hospitals will be left with all the complex cases, as private clinics skim off the easiest patients.
How does that make sense?
For 100 years or more, literally hundreds of towns across Ontario have struggled to build, worked to build their local public hospitals, those communities have donated, they’ve donated through their payroll deductions to their local hospitals, they have fundraised, they volunteered, they have literally built their local hospitals.
Oversight is left outside of the government to a third party, or multiple parties.
And they’re given wide discretion, powers and responsibilities, including sole discretion on licensing and establishing new classes of service.
Wow, that is a big wow.
Total lack of transparency, no requirement to gazette any new clinics or anything.
It opens up huge possible conflicts of interest and possible corruption, as they’re not subject to any public disclosure or public reporting.
It’s just completely unneeded.
Ontario has operating rooms in every public hospital across the province that are underused.
We have operating rooms in virtually every hospital that are closed for days, weeks, months at a time, even permanently due to underfunding of those hospitals.
They claim that this is the only option to deal with the surgical and diagnostic backlog is utter nonsense.
It is completely false.
So why then privatize?
In whose interests is it to handover these vital services from our public, not-for-profit hospitals to private for-profit entities, while the only people who benefit are those private for-profit companies, which begs the question: is that why this policy is being followed?
Bill 60 is not the answer to Ontario’s health care crisis, investing in our public health care system, staffing it properly, is the answer.
Our lives are not for-profit. This is not our health care act.
This is your health care act, it will only benefit a few and our lives are worth more than that.
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