Action Alert: Stop the move to for-profit health care, premier!

With recent announcements, Premier Ford has more than doubled Ontario’s investment in for-profit health care to more than half a billion dollars. These investments channel desperately needed public funding into private profits, drawing vital resources away from not-for-profit care delivery and reducing health-system capacity.

Join us! Call on the premier to stop channelling public funding for health care into private profits!

For-profit health care compromises quality, costs more, expands a two-tier system, erodes service in our public hospitals and worsens wait times. For-profit care suctions off nurses, other health professionals and funding out from the public system, leaving it with deteriorated services. A weakened public health system gives private, for-profit providers leverage to increase costs. Witness the experience of jurisdictions that have been down this path – Alberta and the United Kingdom, for example.

The solutions to clearing the backlog lie within a strengthened public health-care system, not in investors nor for-profit care. Across the province, diagnostic imaging equipment and hospital operating rooms remain underutilized. Indeed, in Ottawa, one hospital rents its operating rooms on weekends to a for-profit surgical group. Operating rooms and diagnostic imaging labs must run 24/7. Retention and recruitment programs that respect nurses and other health-care workers and provide competitive compensation must be implemented immediately.

Join us! Call on the government to strengthen our public system, not dismantle it.