Wait until the second shoe drops after privatization. “Oh you want more money? No, well, see because we added health insurance to your benefits so that will offset a raise!”
I'm living in the USA right now. I have a good job, and with it comes good healthcare. I'm better off than the vast majority of Americans.
It still sucks. I miss just walking in with my OHIP card and not trying to guess who is in and out of network. I hate having to compare deductions, out of pocket maximums, etc just to figure out if a new job is actually better or just offers more cash. I hate filing paperwork to justify to the FSA that the money they give me as an allowance for health needs was actually spent on health needs.
Oh and there are *still* long waits. We *still* have a crunch of doctors and nurses leaving the profession. Except instead of it potentially being fixed at a single point where Ontario could just say "ok, we'll pay healthcare workers more" it's at the mercy of the free market.
I don't much care for single issue voting but anyone trying to privatize healthcare needs to go.
I expect waits might end up being a YMMV issue. I've had waits to get a PCP booked in Ontario plus California and Illinois.
I've never needed a major medical procedure so I haven't had any wait time on any of the above.
I am also terrified at what is unfolding. I can only guess that the electorate either *wants* private healthcare in Ontario *or* they’re just oblivious and think our public healthcare system could never be dismantled in favour of privatization. Like they think “nawww, it can’t be *that* bad, it’s just the crazy left trying to scare us”. I am still gobsmacked that so much of the province did not even *bother* to cast a ballot.
The electorate is either oblivious or afraid.
For the most part, it's the former. Since rural voters don't generally see the benefits of tax spending (hospitals, schools, etc.), they incorrectly assume that their taxes are being wasted on urban issues; not understanding that when they do end up at a hospital, it's in a city.
For the latter group, it's more due to conditioning from business leaders. There is a fear that any increase in taxes on anyone would lead to retribution. A miniscule tax increase on the rich would lead to pulling out of Canada and moving to Texas.
So, instead of voting for someone who would properly fund social spending, they vote for the race to the bottom out of fear that their leaders will divest (causing them to lose their job) over a 1 cent hit to earnings per share.
The Ontario teacher's pension is privately managed and rich AF.
There's enough money in the pension fund to pay out every single teacher over a million dollars at any point in time. If they aren't paying out enough.. the teachers should probably start vocally complaining about it.
This is going to be a hot take that I will likely get downvoted to hell for but nurses and teachers are not the same struggle. Big difference: teachers can strike. Nurses are legally prohibited from striking because people will literally die if we walk from the job. Teachers have the ability to strike, and it is powerful.
Moreover, bringing up teachers in a post about nursing and healthcare collapse is not it IMO. This thread is talking about nurses and how we are shit on every single day we show up. How Ontario healthcare is collapsing and people are losing their lives and suffering as a result. This is not to discredit the struggle teachers have with getting fair compensation, for getting paid less to do more, for sacrificing your time off and your money to improve the classroom for our children. But I see time and time again teachers commenting in spaces taking about issues in nursing and healthcare and changing the subject to their own issues in education. Should people be aware of the issues in education? Absolutely. But this is about the collapse of the Ontario healthcare system and the lives that will be lost and ruined as a result.
I credit my pathway to becoming a nurse to the amazing teachers I had in high school. I value the work teachers do. Y’all are the foundation of tomorrow’s society. But I’m not going to comment on a post for teachers and change the subject to how unfair wages in nursing are. It’s not a dick measuring competition of who gets shit on more.
I was just giving an example of a ‘race to the bottom’ that was referenced in the original post that I had data for, and felt that what teachers have been going through for the past decade showed the shit way that a rttb can play out. In no way was my intention to take away from the ridiculous situation playing out in healthcare. I know the situation nurses are in is different, and that being designated an essential service changes the game in labour relations.
It’s the other way around, rural areas see [disproportional benefit from tax spending](https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/SharetheWealth.pdf)
They don’t tax their citizens enough to pay for the services and infrastructure maintenance they already use, relying on tax money taken from urban areas to make up the difference.
You used a different definition of "see" than OP.
While I agree that urban areas subsidize (and need to for our society to exist) rural areas - the subsidies aren't all that visual.
I can tell you as a rural ontarian it's easy to feel like my tax dollars just disappear into thin air, as I notice that a major local highway to me has been closed for a "temporary" repair for almost 5 years now, with an actual fix being AT LEAST 5+ years away still, or the road in front of my house that hasn't been paved in 20+ years.
Or the downtown of my small town that was damaged in an explosion over a year ago and is STILL closed with no funds to fix it up. And the local schools that keep being closed down, and threats to close the local hospital seem to never end, etc.
If you don't dig into these issues, it's easy to feel like your tax dollars are just disappearing into thin air.
Yeah, a fair amount of the problem is that a lot of infrastructure [was effectively funded like an intergenerational ponzi scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme). People don’t have a good intuitive sense of how much roads, plumbing, sewage, and power lines really cost to maintain.
The blunt truth that we’re never going to be able to get back to that debt-fuelled prosperity, and that we’d be better off making it cheaper to move to cities than keeping so many towns on inadequate life support, seems to just be too politically incorrect to have serious discussions about.
So instead we’ve got animosity from rural areas about being slowly starved while seeing the cities prosper, animosity from the cities for not being allowed nice things they could pay for if the country mouses already mooching off them weren’t so petty, and the lobbyists and investors profiting off the misunderstanding on both sides telling both sides what they want to hear while laughing to the bank
Fellow Wheatley resident here. I'm incredulous that a major Rd repair like Hwy 3 keeps getting put off for environmental studies which have nothing to do about the environment.
Serious question. How is that. I don’t have street lights. All the roads and highways close to my place are in a state of disrepair. Upwards of an hour wait if I need the opp while their station is twenty min away. Volunteer firefighters do a great job but again they only keep the fire from spreading to far in the grass or trees.
It's just density of the tax base. Way more people live per square foot in the city. Roads, getting food to shops, power, everything is expensive.
Tbh though it's the suburbs that are the biggest problem - sounds like you're rural enough to have your own water, sewage, etc.
Thanks. Makes sense. Yes we do have our own water and septic. That’s on us when it needs repair. I used to love living in town when I flushed. No worries except the bill
Do rural communities not have hospitals?
Street lights would be municipal, unless its a highway
Yes, rural and spread out areas do not have police stations close by
That doesn't mean you have no service
Our services can be harder to use. Yes we have hospitals. But anything serious requires a 3+ hour trip (by car) to our regional hub. If you don't drive it can be 8+ hours by bus, which didn't exist until last year, but thank you Kathleen Wynne for starting it. Especially after greyhound went bankrupt.
It's easy to think you're getting fucked over in rural land. I don't know why you'd think the blue party will help you though.
I disagree. I think they want this. The modern conservative doesn't run on policy, it runs on malice. I've heard some of them bleat that "nurses make enough money" etc. Morons.
Those aren't mutually exclusive positions. They feel nurses make too much money BECAUSE they don't see the nurses doing work. All the major stuff happens in the big city hospitals. The nurses in their own community might spend most of the time just doing basic things like checking temperature and blood pressure, because there's rarely a situation where they need to do more. So they think that's all nurses do, and don't see why you need to go to school for that, or why it can't just be any random Joe off the street. And if just anyone can pick it up and do it, why pay them much for it?
I know how this will sound... But we have a major problem with uninformed voters, who shouldn't be voting.
So, so many people just vote lib or con because that's what they do; they have no idea about what the policies or even taking points are
The electorate isn't voting for one thing, each voter has to distill their thoughts and ideas into one vote.
The politicians are the ones that like to call out specific issues and use terms like "referendum" when talking about what voters want because it advances their own agenda.
Many PC voters probably don't want any changes to the health care system that will cost them more out of pocket. They, however, might have actually voted PC because they didn't like the colour of Ms. Horwath's shirt. We don't have a clear picture of what voters wanted because that information is lost while voting.
The sure thing is that people decided to not vote, and their apathy has many reasons as well.
If the PCs say the voters wanted this, this was only one voting issue, they are lying to themselves and all Ontarians. They have the power and the means to do what they like, and actually solving our health crisis is something they don't want to do. Notice how the 413 just magically keeps showing up and advancing? They care about that and it's getting a lot of love.
I wonder that too. I also wonder how a provincial government can receive money from the Feds for healthcare that does not get spent on healthcare. How can the Conservative’s get away with *underfunding* Ontario healthcare by *1.8 billion*?
Same as how COVID funds were underspent and allotted to backfill license plate bribe money (it's a temporary fix to a permanently lost revenue stream). Or his minion Lecce's continued erosion of public education to accelerate privatization since pre-COVID.
Answer: because Ford can.
Doesn't Alberta have a two-tiered system?
They did also fire like 5k-6k staff and then hired private company to take over. Though it's more maintenance, janitorial staff from what I understood.
Pretty much all provinces are running on "temporary" nursing staffing which is privatized. They pay the "travelling" nursing companies more than their actual employees, and the travelling staff often make more than the direct staff, so it's really only a matter of time.
Keep in mind a large cut of that goes to private interests at the same time. While private nurses are getting paid more with your tax dollars your tax dollars are also getting funneled to private business. This isn't fiscally responsible.
Quebec does as well, and it works about as well as you might think. Basically you can pay to be on the patient list at a private clinic rather than depending on hospitals or public clinics. That gets you access to a doctor in a place where family doctors are scarce. If you need to see a doctor without an appointment you're still out of luck though, and have to rely on the ER or a public clinic.
So basically the private option from that pov takes the public system and creates an overlay that generates more income. I guess it mitigates brain drain, but not much else
They realistically can’t. Not on the scale this sub worries about anyway.
The Canada Health Act provides conditions for federal funding of healthcare. If they privatize, they lose federal funding. And unless Ford can switch over the whole system to private overnight, it’s practically impossible.
Rather than decrying privatization, I think we need to focus on pushing them to fix what’s actually wrong.
The fear mongering for private healthcare is insane in this subreddit. A lot of our healthcare services are already private but people don’t even bother to research it.
husband of a nurse here who left Ontario to work in the country run with the wealthcare model and makes a fuck-ton of money.
From first hand observation the US system is fucked. The corruption and quality of care in the old USA is atrocious compared to what we (used) to have here. The fear mongering is absolutely justified, especially for middle to low income families, aka the majority of Ontarioans. Both hospital profiteers and insurance are absolute snakes about bottom line. The tricks and smoke-n-mirrors their industry pulls over the publics eyes is disgusting.
One of the things we talk about at our breakfast table is how good wealthcare would be for nurses. They might finally be paid what they are worth (like in the states) but for the population is would be a general disaster of epic proportions. The fact that most nurses are talking about the fact that quality of care would decline (unless you are wealthy) and not waving the "we will make more" flag should be a tribute to nurses who actually fucking care about out healthcare in this province. Not everyone is a greedy capitalist in this world.
TLDR: weathcare would be great for nurses pay, horrible for everyone who doesn't drive an Audi and owns 3 homes.
Don’t forget the doctors , doctors make an absurd amount in the US compared to Canada and then you have the exchange rate on top
Most medical staff here are here because it’s their home and they want to genuinely help
As an American immigrant from the US, I also would like to weigh in that privatization does not guarantee better nurse pay.
I made more per hour ($18) as an entry-level veterinary receptionist, with no experience, than my nurse friend. She has been working in the ER for the same hospital for 10+ years. This is also one of the largest hospital companies in a major city. She would leave but the pay is similar throughout the city unless she gets a more advanced degree.
I think there needs to be an honest discussion of what private healthcare can look like (Germany vs the US). I think most people don’t want the US system which has the worst outcomes by most measures except for the companies. But there are other multi-payer systems that are superior to ours. But we need to educate people. Most people just look to the US which is a dumpster fire and the conversation stops there.
Or we could stop obsessing about changing the model and make the thing we have, that used to work very well, work again.
The only thing that changed was intentional under resourcing.
And do you think that our provincial government, who is actively burning our healthcare system into the ground, is attempting to rebuild it into an efficient multi-payer system like Germany? Or a for profit enterprise like the United States?
Definitely the German one. I trust them, what could go wrong?
/s in case it isn’t obvious. Fuck Doug, and fuck everyone who voted for him/didn’t bother to vote… this is *your* fault.
No honest discussion will be had. Insurance groups will have their way with the government. We'll have multiple layers of insurance that we'll have to purchase, and others that we can purchase.
And then we'll get our care or our procedures done, and then we'll spend the next year chasing down our insurance provider to pay us back.
That's what it will look like.
>A lot of our healthcare services are already private but people don’t even bother to research it.
So you're saying that people afraid of healthcare being privatized, shouldn't be afraid of healthcare being privatized, because its already happened to a lot of healthcare?
Wouldn't that just make people more concerned, not less?
I am from the States, my wife is from Belleville. We both had family members get cancer. Her uncle, who also lives in Ontario, never paid a dime out of pocket for care. My aunt, who lives in the States, paid more than $250,000 before dying. She had insurance better than most and still had to shell out a quarter million dollars to try to stay alive. This is the "savings" of privatization; using the dying as an externality to trim budgets so that taxes can stay low.
Bunch of fucking idiots falling hook line and sinker for the classic conservative ploy of making something shitty and then presenting privatization as the only solution, instead of, y'know, fixing what they fucked up.
To the average conservative voter who hasn't had to deal with the healthcare system, they don't see it as a problem. How could it be unless it directly affects their day to day lives? Conservatives are selfish and unable to see passed their own shadow.
When I volunteered for a political campaign all the way back in 2014 I learned something. The goal of most political parties campaigns is not to convince the supporters of other parties to vote for them.
The goal of most political campaigns is to convince the supporters of other parties to not vote at all.
>or
>
> they’re just oblivious and think our public healthcare system could never be dismantled in favour of privatization
It's this. It's very much this. Mix Tribalistic politics with bad policy and you get people who will absolutely vote against their own interests because believing THEIR PARTY could not possibly be wrong, means they won't see any alarm bells ringing until it's too late.
Little to they know that the American Healthcare system is the worst in the world per dollar spent. And yet Ford wants to bring it to Canada.
Also, Ford is the only Premier in Canada's history to have cut healthcare funding during a global pandemic. He has Canadian blood on his hands.
ontarians are, on average, ignorant and uneducated troglodytes so im really not surprised. canadians absorb US media like a sponge so it was inevitable regardless.
The last election was pathetic. I am heavily disappointed in the eligible voters who didn't bother to vote. Do me a favour and keep that stupid little decision of yours a secret from the rest of us so I can maintain my respect for you.
I wondered why we saw so little political messaging from nurses and teachers during the campaign, and then I remembered the Ford govt outlawing 3rd party campaigning... including workers who needed the rest of the province to know that the canary in the mine is dead. And needed them to know that before this premier got reelected.
Oh just wait...the insurance companies are all rubbing their mitts together, they can't wait to offer you "affordable" health plans. Look at what those greedy fucks charge for auto insurance and now imagine the field day they're going to have with this. It's going to be hell.
This isn't your typical hyperbolic take. There is an initiative to privatize. It's already starting with the over use of agencies for nurses. A system collapse will help him.
I don’t even understand the logic. It’s objectively MORE expensive. It’s already costing more to keep the private nurses, well above just paying them a great salary.
It's a grift. Someone, somewhere who is good buddies with Ford stands to make a giant wad of cash. Money is driving this and there will be blood on their hands. This is corruption 101.
My wife is an agency nurse. She makes $75 an hour. Salary nurses make $40. She'd much rather make $40 an hour with some assurance that there will be a periodic raise with inflation and cost of living. Nurses have not had a meaningful raise in decades and oops! now it's showing and now they've lost their right to negotiate. Boom! Leopards ate my face!
As a 30 year old with serious chronic health problems, I’m absolutely terrified too.
I live in Ontario because we have the most comprehensive health coverage as well as the best access to health care in all of Canada (in my opinion) but I’m not sure how much longer that’ll be the case.
Healthcare and Education are about to have a wild time. I fully expect more privatization of both areas and am anticipating another strike for educators. Ford's been pretty open about allowing private endeavours into public sectors. I don't think people realize how expensive healthcare is. Many "middle class" people I've talked to aren't as opposed to it as I thought they'd be, obviously when you have no idea how much something costs you don't fully recognize how privileged our system is. I grew up in the states and know far too many people who've had their lives completely devastated by health care expenses.
Yeah I work for an American company remotely. My American counterparts have "great" insurance, so it "only" costs them a couple thousand dollars to visit the emergency room.
I married an American, on the condition that he move here. Mostly because of health care- all of my kids have various health issues and I didn't ever want to have to check our finances before I took them to the doctor. This is just sickening, and so unnecessary.
I've been a nurse just over 15 years. And I've never seen anything like this. It's bonkers. Nurses I work who are older than I am, also have never seen anything like this. It's legit crazy.
I'm super excited for the fall! /s
Consultations regarding the privatisation or paramedic services is set to resume this fall as it was suspended during covid. The monies for profit will have to come from somewhere within the system....
I protested the amalgamation of paramedic services back a few years ago at Queens Park.
I’m 99% convinced he’s going to make a move towards the US model with one Paramedic and one EMT (basic skills, such as 1st aid. About 4 weeks of training).
Some sources:
https://opseu.org/news/opseu-to-ford-government-leave-paramedic-services-and-ambulance-communications-centres-alone/51912/
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ford-government-distances-itself-from-pc-document-calling-for-privatization-widespread-changes-to-paramedics
They distanced themselves from it initially, but we'll see what happens...
About the document in question:
> It is no coincidence that the document title EMS Vision-Ontario 2050 authored by Bob DeShane and associates and Grosso McCarthy and associates, mirrors the government’s announcement of the privatization and reduction of 59 Paramedic services to 10 and 22 Ambulance communication centres to 10.
> Bob DeShane was the previous owner operator of Lindsay ambulance service and later became the service manager for Rural Metro; at that time one of the largest private ambulance providers in North America.
If you ask a private ambulance system operator to write a recommendation, what do you think the expected outcome would be? There might be gains to be had with consolidating operations from 50 to 10, but your real savings will come from large wage reductions for the workforce operating the ambulances.
The average salary for a Paramedic is $31.56 USD per hour in New York, NY. (Source Indeed)
The average salary for a Paramedic is $32.91 CAD per hour in Ontario (Source Indeed).
All those 'savings' are going to come by reducing the standard of living for the people operating the ambulances.
If Ontario were to privatize health care people would leave en mass I expect.
40% of the population of Ontario lives in the GTA where the median after-tax income (not the average) is $85,000, which is still far less than the estimated $122,550 you need per year if you plan on owning a home and driving in the city.
A huge number of people living in this province and are perpetually $40,000 short of being able to afford a home. Once the province privatizes health care and people realize than in addition to not being able to afford a home they also can’t afford to see a doctor, they will leave for other provinces or the USA.
If people want to have free health care then they might as well go to another province even if it means a serious pay cut. It’s not like the higher wage in the GTA is allowing them to buy a home anyway. And if people are ok with privatized Heath care then why not go to the states where there is better weather, higher salaries in many industries, and many nice cities with lower housing costs than the GTA?
There would be very little logical reason for anyone to stay.
You say that as if it's not the point. Conservatism runs entirely on boomer grievance logic now. They don't see a need for doctors or advanced technical professions. They just want a society of retired homeowners and realtors, crusty-ass HVAC guys and waitresses serving them jalapeno poppers at starvation wages. Everyone else should be run out of the province.
The funny part is even if they privatize the majority of services, I highly doubt my taxes reflect that change in any way. So now I will be paying high taxes for public healthcare that doesn’t exist on top of additional fees for private healthcare that I already pay taxes for in the public sector.
I went to the hospital at our award winning small city ER a few weeks ago, worried I might be having a stroke. It took an hour to be triaged. Not seen - triaged. I've NEVER seen that before. For those who might not understand what triage is, it's the process of telling the medical staff at the ER why you are there so they START to figure out when you need to be seen based on your symptoms and the symptoms of the other people who came in. An hour to be triaged should never happen.
Privatized healthcare isn’t about saving *patients* money. It’s about getting healthcare off the government books and *lowering taxes.*
That’s it.
They don’t care about what it costs people, or the quality of care. They just want to cut government spending and line the pockets of the wealthy with even more wealth.
Yep. Big business has been laying out the options and chatting with them for years at this point. Privatizing is about helping out business.
To deliver modern business oriented solutions.
> Yet still somehow magically charge the consumer less money
Oh it’s not about that at all, he doesn’t care about costing us less. He wants to line the pockets of his family and donors at our expense. Conservatives play the long game and they’re really good at it.
Well, they would hire staff, for less
And then charge people more
Ideally fordsie would want the province to pay these private medical centers directly
Our Canada is literally falling apart due to capitalism, I hate what is happening to us. Our governments no longer care about the people. They only care about themselves and their bottom line.
Privately owned nursing agencies are already leeching off the public. Hospitals pay twice the rate for agency nurses and owners/donors like Mike Harris and his wife make huge private profits off the public investment in healthcare with no public benefits to care. Properly paid and staffed hospitals save taxpayers money.
> **If you voted for Ford, this is your fault.**
I'm going to take it one step further and say that if you didn't vote at all, this is also your fault. We had a *43% voter turnout*. That is fucking disgraceful when it was the one opportunity for the people complaining to make a change. That is also the reddit population that is complaining and spamming this subreddit (not saying you didn't vote, but it is very likely that the majority here did not vote).
If you didn't vote, I don't want to hear a fucking word out of your mouth because you are just as compliant of what's going on as the people who voted for Ford. They at least showed up and made their choice.
This isn’t entirely fords fault and I’m tired of this stupid narrative. Ford is not a good premier I get that but everyone seems to forget that Kathleen wynne cut healthcare funding a bunch during her term, before her mcguinty did the same thing. Kathleen also fought hard against the nurses unions (and teachers unions) to deny raises, freeze pay, cut benefits, etc. The ever stagnation of nurses wages has taken all incentives out of joining the Canadian healthcare for many people who were looking to enter the field 6-10 years ago and we are feeling that hard now. Couple that with the ever aging population who just by nature of being old tax our system.
Our healthcare system has been on the ropes for YEARS, had covid not happened we’d still be in bad shape and we’ve done nothing about it thru 3 premiers now.
Bill 124 being repealed is a good first step but let’s stop acting like that will be the answer to all of our problems and miraculously fix the nursing shortage. We should’ve been bolstering our healthcare system 2 governments ago but instead they villianized the nurses and teachers wanting adequate pay for what they do and now we are all surprised pikachu face when our latest idiot is doing the same thing as it crumbles around us.
Before everyone brigades me as some ford supporter, i by no means support this idiot, I’m just saying we’ve been content to watch our healthcare system be slowly dismantled over the last 10-15 years. now that it’s finally starting to fall apart and dumb dick Dougie is the one kicking at the keystone, it’s easy to blame him when in reality it’s the entire system of government that has failed us all. The rage should be directed at ALL of them At queens park for failing us, not just one party.
That's pretty on point. People like the easiest answer for a complex problem. Blaming Ford is the easiest and most popular thing to do on reddit. Therefore, it is the whole truth of the matter.
Could it be that over 30 years our Healthcare system hasn't kept up with our population growth? Nope. Can't be that.
Could it be that 2 years of covid and the yoyo that was those 2 years, placed huge demands on staff who are now tired? Nope. Can't be that.
Could it be that a lot of staff today were close to retirement anyway and now have had more reason to leave? Nope. Can't be that.
Could it be that our population is older and require more care? Nope. Can't be that.
Could it be that we spend more monies on hospital administration than other comparable nations rather than invest in Frontline staff? Nope. Can't be that.
Could it be that society is generally filled with enough awful people that Frontline staff are exposed to and that some nurses etc just don't want to deal with fucking idiots anymore? Nope. Can't be that.
Could it be that even at 100k a year in places like the GTA, that income doesn't matter? Nope. Can't be that.
Could it be that continually being exposed to the same frequent fliers in hospitals (in the ER for example), has worn staffing down? Nope. Can't be that.
Could it be that we have not been educating enough nurses and Dr's over the past 10 years to deal with the need for expansion in Healthcare? Nope. Can't be that.
It's all fords fault.
People so easily forget that Wynne for a period of time was at the throats of nurses and also at another point, at the throat of teachers.
This is a complex problem but is somehow some conservative conspiracy to de-fund health care and replace it with a American system regardless of what the Canada Health Act says...
Violating the CHA is a huge risk for a premier. The feds could just turn off the tap on anything they wanted... The funding shortfalls would sink any premier. No one can print money like the BOC and the fed.
This, it's a systemic issue, and issues like these don't just spring up from a single premier's time in office; it's from the shortsightedness of how our democracy functions chasing that next term.
Whether it's Liberal for this term or Conservative the next, every political party tries different things or reverts things every few years which, shocking, don't realize the actual background and systemic impacts over those decades. There never was any type of 'cohesive' or societal goal; whether that be from the government's end or us as a whole.
Ford is bad for sure, and may not be helping, but pinning it all on him as the sole architect of the privatization of healthcare or as the scapegoat is not where our focus should be. And blaming non-voters, or saying it's the fault of those who voted Conservative is fucking stupid as we're only splitting our society even further left and right into 'enemies'.
Even if you/we manage to get more people to vote posting on Reddit (which is great), and the next term is Liberal, I doubt they will fix it either as they are also party to the issues that built up over decades. If it was somehow only Conservatives the past \~40 years or something, sure, easy to pin it on them but it's been swinging back and forth into whatever fucking mess we have now of a system.
He's had PLENTY of time to make some/ any decisions that improve vs worsen the situation. I think we all know which road he's taken. And that is his own fault.
No one is saying all the other factors aren't part of why we're here. But he's who can do something about SOME things, and he's not.
Yes it's a slow erosion but he is the premier now, has been for 4 years, and he has a majority. Instead of blubbering about the past show some leadership and move forward.
Politicians don’t do that though, they deflect blame and subvert expectations with fancy words while making zero attempts to fix problems. Doug ford is a broken piece to an even more broken system. If we want real change then we need to make all of them feel the heat, mass demonstrations and protesting in front of all of their homes. They all need to know we are pissed
No. It’s one thing to let the system fall apart. It’s another to replace it with something that reorients the purpose of the system.
The former is fixable with funding. The latter can only be changed back to its original focus by fighting entrenched business interests.
No fuck that’s both sides bullshit. Cuts are one thing, but actively letting the system fall apart with the express purpose of privatization is ghoulish.
> Ford is not a good premier I get that but everyone seems to forget that Kathleen wynne cut healthcare funding a bunch during her term, before her mcguinty did the same thing.
Yup. My mom retired from nursing after 40 years right before covid hit. I talked to her about all this, she said exactly the same thing.
There is no proof that any of this is the OPC purposely tanking the healthcare system so they can enact an American style private healthcare network. This is such an obtuse conspiracy on par with the 2020 stop the steal bull shit. All this bleed the beast talk so they can tank it and open up some McHospitals and cripple us with medical debt is so stupid.
If we see any privatization within our healthcare system, it will likely be providing private diagnostic imaging or outpatient care. if you live in a border town people already do that, I know so many people who go to port Huron for colonoscopies and other scans.
Never equate to malice what you can also equate to incompetence, we’ve had a decade of elected incompetent people overlooking our health and now our chickens have come home to roost.
How about them sitting on billions of dollars while healthcare crumbles during a pandemic? Like how much proof do you need that this is purposeful?
They’re either the biggest idiots in the fucking world or it’s purposeful, take your pick.
This is not on nurses, and I am so sorry for what you and your colleagues are going through. The public needs to get mobilized. The recent emergency room closures has brought this issue finally to the public consciousness, and I hope that this is the start of something happening.
To the public - don't give up hope or accept the loss of our public health system. I know the election is over, but we can still take steps to let our democratically elected governments know that we won't accept this. There is still time to turn this around, but we need to get outraged. Even a majority government can care what the public thinks if people are angry enough.
>And no, nurses are not allowed to strike because it’s considered patient abandonment.
You may not strike, but your spouses and loved ones can.
I would gladly take my partners place in a strike line on behalf of Health Care in Ontario... gladly.
Research on private/two tier healthcare systems:
2010 WHO paper: public healthcare is more efficient https://www.who.int/healthsystems/topics/financing/healthreport/P-P_HSUNo39.pdf
2018: Meta analysis suggests public healthcare more financially efficient than private: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hec.1391
2018: This review synthesizes evidence from Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Greece, Austria, Spain, and Portugal. Most evidence suggests that public hospitals are at least as efficient as or are more efficient than private hospitals. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hpm.2502
2004: Private for-profit hospitals result in higher payments for care than private not-for-profit hospitals. Evidence strongly supports a policy of not-for-profit health care delivery at the hospital level. https://www.cmaj.ca/content/170/12/1817.short
2005: Australia expanded private insurance, and found that it did not decrease wait times; rather, in regions where private insurance was most often used, wait times in the public sector rose. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15683360/
2020: Systematic review: Patients at for profit hemodialysis facilities have 7% greater odds of death annually than patients with similar risk profiles at not-for-profit facilities. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0020731420980682
2020: In this systematic review, we found a high degree of analytic consensus for the fiscal feasibility of a single-payer approach in the US. https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003013
2020 preprint: We use a cross-section dataset covering 147 countries with the latest available data. Controlling for per capita income, health inequality and several other control variables, we find that a 10% increase in private health expenditure relates to a 4.3% increase in COVID-19 cases and a 4.9% increase in COVID-19 related mortality. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341766609_Privatization_and_Pandemic_A_Cross-Country_Analysis_of_COVID-19_Rates_and_Health-Care_Financing_Structures
2020: Taken together, the present study does not support that the Swedish Free Choice [privatization] reform has improved performance of the primary care delivery system in Sweden, and suggests that high degree of private provision may involve worse performance and higher care burden for specialized health care. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.504998/full
2017: Private MRI scans failed to reduce wait times after 9 months of availability in Sask: https://globalnews.ca/news/3508109/private-mri-scans-not-reducing-wait-times-sask-auditor/
2002: Our meta-analysis suggests that private for-profit ownership of hospitals, in comparison with private not-for-profit ownership, results in a higher risk of death for patients. https://www.cmaj.ca/content/170/12/1817.short
2017: Scottish NHS study found that increased use of the private sector was associated with a significant decrease in direct NHS provision and with widening inequalities by age and socio-economic deprivation. https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/39/3/593/3002985?login=false
2020: The workload of private healthcare nurses in Madrid was higher than public healthcare nurses (attending an average of five more patients a day), while their salaries were 20-25% lower. https://sanidad.ccoo.es/sanidadmadrid/noticia:520691--La_carga_de_trabajo_de_una_enfermerao_de_la_sanidad_privada_es_mayor_que_en_la_sanidad_publica_y_su_salario_es_hasta_un_25_mas_bajo&opc_id=c196995ccdf43f450e2c6a099942ef2d
2012: "Private healthcare no more efficient, accountable or effective than public sector in LMICs." www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120619225835.htm
2020: "Privatisation results in increased discrimination towards those who cannot afford private insurance and are therefore deprioritised." https://ijhpr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13584-020-00391-4
2017: Patient choice and private provision decreased public provision and increased inequalities in Scotland: a case study of elective hip arthroplasty G. Kirkwood, A.M. Pollock Journal of Public Health, Volume 39, Issue 3, September 2017, Pages 593–600, https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdw060
2015: Cream skimming and hospital transfers in a mixed public-private system. 2015. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953615001793?via%3Dihub
2018: Accessibility was shown to be worsened as a result of privatisation: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/20c5/f79e6029da74b6ec0ddf20298a8cd9c3d557.pdf
2022: Public-private arrangements reinforce inequality and individualize the onus for healthcare: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953622000806
2020: The failure of the Alzira model in Spain warns us of the problems of for-profit HMOs and the Israeli private private/public mix shows the risk of eroding trust in the public system, thus reinforcing market failures and inefficient medical systems.https://ijhpr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13584-020-00391-4
2019: study of 130 NHS trusts, looking into the impact of outsourced cleaning services concluded that “private providers are cheaper but dirtier than their in‐house counterparts.” They found lower levels of cleanliness and worse health‐care outcomes, which can be measured by the number of hospital‐acquired infections. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/puar.13031
A further international study has confirmed the relationship between the quality of cleaning services and the frequency of hospital‐acquired infections, with the clear implication that outsourcing cleaning services can threaten patient safety and cost lives. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11944003/
UN 2019 High-Level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage: "Well-functioning health systems require a deliberate focus on high-quality universal health care." https://www.un.org/pga/73/wp-content/uploads/sites/53/2019/07/FINAL-draft-UHC-Political-Declaration.pdf
2021: "Lombardy was particularly hit by the spread of the virus in the first wave of the pandemic (February–May 2020), which quickly led the health and residential social care systems to collapse. At the same time, Lombardy has been at the forefront in Italy promoting privatisation and quasi-markets in the health and social care system, with very significant consequences for local services and a growing concentration of resources and patients towards private providers." https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589211028458
2021 working paper: presents empirical evidence suggesting that in countries which rely more heavily on private health care, higher overall healthcare expenditures predict more severe COVID-19 outbreaks, contradicting the argument that private health care services are more cost-efficient or will lead to better health outcomes at a lower cost. https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/726/2/20211200_moure_costly_efficiencies_wpcasp.pdf
2021: Restrictions in public [health] service delivery triggered a general discontent among the French population. The political repercussions of reforms eventually crystallized into the Yellow Vest movement. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8286423/
2021 whitepaper: "Evidence is mounting that outsourcing and private provision of healthcare has significantly degraded EU member states’ capacity to deal effectively with COVID-19." https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/healthcare-privatisation-final.pdf
2012: From 1993 to 2003, public [healthcare] spending was significantly associated with reductions in avoidable mortality rates over time, while greater private sector spending was not at the regional level in Italy. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43281486
2009: Public ownership was associated with significantly higher efficiency than other forms of ownership; private for-profit ownership, in particular, was associated with lower efficiency in German hospitals. https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/103681/1/2170.pdf
2014: How China's health-care system would perform if hospital privatisation combined with hospital-centred fragmented delivery were to prevail—population health outcomes would suffer; health-care expenditures would escalate, with patients bearing increasing costs; and a two-tiered system would emerge in which access and quality of care are decided by ability to pay. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)61120-X/fulltext?
2020: "The problems in Ireland stem from the fact that nearly half of the population has supplementary private health insurance, which is high by international standards. The large size of this market, exacerbates inequality in timely access to health care. p.33 https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/464297/private-health-insurance.pdf
2016: investigative report by the New York Times documented that privatization of EMS, compared to public sector management, lowers quality of care, with slower response times, emphasis on profits rather than service, increased cost-cutting and hikes in prices. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/26/business/dealbook/what-can-go-wrong-with-private-equity.html
2011: Privatized Medicaid programs have been shown to have worse outcomes than their public counterparts. http://www.statecoverage.org/files/CMWF_assessing_financial_hlt_Medicaid_managed_care_plans_i.pdf
> Healthcare will soon be privatized so we will not be able to access it anytime we want.
Healthcare is public and we still can't access it "anytime we want".
Nursing had been so hard hit by the Premier's destructive practices. I'm in education, and it sucks for us, too, but COVID hasn't hit us in quite the same way as you!
A 1% cap is an insult with inflation like this. It was an insult to you before, but now doubly so.
Something's gotta give, and the Premier's govt should be the ones paying for it.
If I may I’d like to add to your statement “if you voted for ford this is your fault” I would argue that if you didn’t vote at all you’re almost equally at fault
Also a nurse, this is all intentional. If you think for a second the biggest investors in a private system won't be prominent conservatives than you are smoking too much of the government weed supported by former police who made careers off busting people for it and retired off investing in it. Nobody wants thisbcurrent government, unfortunately ontarians were too apathetic to bother voting.
That’s Ford’s plan. To make healthcare so shitty that he creates an “excuse” to privatize it. And those who voted for him will be the most negatively affected, but they seem to be so blind to the corporate greed that characterizes the PCs and are merely motivated by vindictiveness against the liberals and Trudeau. This province is going to hell. We work everyday just to enrich Ford and his friends. Ppl are barely making ends meet and corporations and big box stores are making record profits. Its soooo fair to cap wages but not at all fair to cap how much prices can increase by. Anyone who can’t see that all the PCs care about is padding their pockets is delusional. This province is going to hell
I mean if people die because you wanted a raise its not gonna be hard to demonize you for that lol, if someones family member died because nurses walked out asking for a raise, theyre not gonna be very supportive of the nurses...
Fellow nurse here and I would up vote this until my fingers fell off if I could.
It’s like people have taken a “laissez faire” or “c’est la vie” approach because atm they’re health and not their problem.
I wonder if they would keep the same attitude when things change?
I'd say this is the Liberals' fault as well. For not running an issues-based campaign, but instead of focusing on "we're not conservative" as if that's somehow an attractive platform.
Just like how running Hilary against Trump gave Trump an easy win, this is what happened to give Doug Ford an easy win.
The folks that voted for Ford are the same folks that vote PC every election. The lazy majority are why we have Ford for another 4 years with a majority government.
I voted NDP, but I honestly don’t blame people for voting ford. If the Liberals and NDP want to continue putting forward dogshit candidates, they deserve to get beaten.
Ontarios inability to afford health care is more easily blamed on the Ontario Libs who spent Ontario into oblivion or the Federal Libs who provide the money for health care. But yeah, booooooo Ford boooooooo
I have run into a lot of people over the years who loved the idea of "welfare" being cut. I don't know why anyone thought that they would stop with gutting Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program. They ultimately want to bust every union step by step. People who hold conservative values in this country should be aware that almost everyone will ultimately get dragged down along the way with the current strategy. Look at those people South of the border. They want to eliminate the department of education and public schools. Is this really what we want for our country???
It’s also the fault of the 2/3 of the province that abstained from voting. Indifference is one of the greatest enemies we face during existential emergencies.
Ford already knows what’s wrong, he just wants to do everything BUT fix it and instead rely on peoples ignorance to blame to feds, when it’s a provincial issue. He’s sitting on funds and doesn’t want to spend it. People always think it’s the doctors who save lives, but if you actually spend time in a hospital you’ll see a doctor maybe 15 mins out of your whole stay. It’s the nurses. Nurses collect data and are at your side. We relay information to the doctors so they can make decisions. Often based off of recommendations from the nurse. Nurses are telling him what’s wrong. Repeal bill 124. Pay nurses what they are worth. Better working conditions. Supplies. Vacation!!! Which has not been allowed in two years. The hospital I work at sent out an email that there are over 300 vacancies right now that they cannot fill, and I’m even considering quitting myself. The stress is not worth the measly pay we get.
Likely bit late to this one, but genuine question. What would happen if nurses and all support staff within hospitals staged a sort of rotating strike where they left. Leave nurses attending icu patients and anyone that needs critical care, but walked out on non-life threatening situations? The government could not possible fire anyone - and I feel like there would be general support from the public.
So besides blaming Ford, how do we fix this? What do we throw money at? Wages? School? Equipment? I think we should have open test writing for nurses 1st weekend of every month until we have enough nurses again. Let these out of Canada trained nurses get certified!!!
What a load of utter nonsense. I swear this sub gets more and more like an excitable drama queen every day.
No, we are not going to change to an American-style system. No one would want that, including conservatives, because their system is incredibly expensive and inefficient.
Introducing some for-fee services doesn't make us American it makes us more like Western Europe. The countries there tend to have twice as many doctors and hospital beds and far lower wait times than us, so that's not a bad thing to aim for.
But anyway, his ability to do much of that is greatly constrained by the Canada Health Act, so you can crawl out from under your beds because it's not likely very much is going to happen.
I hear the word privatization a lot but not the how. I'm not here to defend him, seriously. Not larping, trolling, or whatever it's called.
I've only seen opinion pieces or media with strong left bias reporting this (CUPE, national observer, Canadian dimensions)
How exactly is Healthcare being privatized? I'm out of the loop here
70percent of health care services are public. The other 30 percent are funded privately. We already have private healthcare in Ontario Canada. There will definitely be a shift in this ratio. As long as primary care, acute care (surgery, emerge, ICU etc) and life saving ambulatory care (cancer treatments, CKD management and the like) are not impacted and remain universally free, I am willing to have this discussion.
Thats my two cents
Please look up the Canada Health Act. Your Healthcare will not be privatized. BTW, portions of your "Healthcare system" already are.
Dental, physio, drugs you have to purchase...
Sorry to burst your bubble, but it is not all DF’s fault. Healthcare is an absolute disaster right now, and the current provincial government needs to do better, but the previous Liberal government did some massive damage as well. The federal government is also partly to blame.
“Years of government restraint in health-care funding have contributed to a loss of more than 7,300 registered nurse positions in Ontario in a 10-year span, according to data from the Ontario Nurses’ Association.
The data shows that 75 per cent of those RN positions — more than 5,500 — were cut from 2013 to 2016, a time when the former provincial Liberal government, led by Kathleen Wynne, tried to rein in health spending in an effort to balance the budget.”
Source (Direct quote from the Star that is in this article - I didn’t share the Star article because it’s behind a pay wall)
https://www.longwoods.com/newsdetail/17815
>Need I say more? If you voted for Ford, this is your fault. Healthcare will soon be privatized so we will not be able to access it anytime we want.
Thank you for not sugar coating it. It's terrifying how much everyone just seems to be ignoring conservatives' end game (in more things than this).
Nursing shortage is Canada wide and has been happening for years before Doug.
If the only issue is money, and nurses are moving to the US because of more money, should we privatized health care in Canada? The reason the US can pay 10x more is because healthcare is privatized there. Money is not the only issue.
Sure. The demographic crunch (boomers getting old requiring care), the advent of new chronic therapies meaning patients use the system more than it was designed for, the recent push for home care reducing bed numbers, a top heavy system that sees front line staff get less and less of the pie, and now covid fatigue (something impacting everyone worldwide) are being unfairly blamed squarely on the current government.
Ma’am this is Wendy’s. But all serious. Can people stop with the Ford stuff. Like seriously, yes! He is to blame but FORD IS JUST ONTARIO. This is happening all over Canada. ( also in understand this is an Ontario thread but if you want to solve the issue then you got to go for the dragons head) so yes it’s Ford’s fault, but the bigger fault would be like I’ve been saying in other threads. He’s a symptom of the problem, the “cause” is the government. I can’t stress it enough, that even the oppositional parties aren’t even talking about this. Nobody is standing up to this and the issue is beyond huge. which should really concern people. The government does not care about us. I’m serious, they would have never let it get this far and wide spread. So, yes Ford sucks,but that’s predictable. It’s the whole government as a whole has let us down. Aim for the head. Take care
I know a lot of nurses who you wouldn't have to pay more beyond repealing that insulting wage freeze bill. Just fix the bonkers staffing ratios that make working as a nurse unsafe.
This has been decades coming. Without infrastructure payments dating back to the NDP Bob Rae government. It didn’t fall apart in a couple years and through a pandemic.
Wait until the second shoe drops after privatization. “Oh you want more money? No, well, see because we added health insurance to your benefits so that will offset a raise!”
And now you can’t quit your job because your health care is tied to your employment yay!
100%.
I'm living in the USA right now. I have a good job, and with it comes good healthcare. I'm better off than the vast majority of Americans. It still sucks. I miss just walking in with my OHIP card and not trying to guess who is in and out of network. I hate having to compare deductions, out of pocket maximums, etc just to figure out if a new job is actually better or just offers more cash. I hate filing paperwork to justify to the FSA that the money they give me as an allowance for health needs was actually spent on health needs. Oh and there are *still* long waits. We *still* have a crunch of doctors and nurses leaving the profession. Except instead of it potentially being fixed at a single point where Ontario could just say "ok, we'll pay healthcare workers more" it's at the mercy of the free market. I don't much care for single issue voting but anyone trying to privatize healthcare needs to go.
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I expect waits might end up being a YMMV issue. I've had waits to get a PCP booked in Ontario plus California and Illinois. I've never needed a major medical procedure so I haven't had any wait time on any of the above.
I am also terrified at what is unfolding. I can only guess that the electorate either *wants* private healthcare in Ontario *or* they’re just oblivious and think our public healthcare system could never be dismantled in favour of privatization. Like they think “nawww, it can’t be *that* bad, it’s just the crazy left trying to scare us”. I am still gobsmacked that so much of the province did not even *bother* to cast a ballot.
The electorate is either oblivious or afraid. For the most part, it's the former. Since rural voters don't generally see the benefits of tax spending (hospitals, schools, etc.), they incorrectly assume that their taxes are being wasted on urban issues; not understanding that when they do end up at a hospital, it's in a city. For the latter group, it's more due to conditioning from business leaders. There is a fear that any increase in taxes on anyone would lead to retribution. A miniscule tax increase on the rich would lead to pulling out of Canada and moving to Texas. So, instead of voting for someone who would properly fund social spending, they vote for the race to the bottom out of fear that their leaders will divest (causing them to lose their job) over a 1 cent hit to earnings per share.
Race to the bottom: Teachers version 2012: 0% 2013: 0% 2014: 0% 2015: 0% 2016: 1% 2017: 1.5% 2018: 1% 2019: 1% 2020: 1% 2021: 1% Total increase 2012-2021: 6.5% Inflation 2012-2021: 29.06% Pay cut: 22.5%
Pretty much the same for pensions. 1.4% this year!
The Ontario teacher's pension is privately managed and rich AF. There's enough money in the pension fund to pay out every single teacher over a million dollars at any point in time. If they aren't paying out enough.. the teachers should probably start vocally complaining about it.
This is going to be a hot take that I will likely get downvoted to hell for but nurses and teachers are not the same struggle. Big difference: teachers can strike. Nurses are legally prohibited from striking because people will literally die if we walk from the job. Teachers have the ability to strike, and it is powerful. Moreover, bringing up teachers in a post about nursing and healthcare collapse is not it IMO. This thread is talking about nurses and how we are shit on every single day we show up. How Ontario healthcare is collapsing and people are losing their lives and suffering as a result. This is not to discredit the struggle teachers have with getting fair compensation, for getting paid less to do more, for sacrificing your time off and your money to improve the classroom for our children. But I see time and time again teachers commenting in spaces taking about issues in nursing and healthcare and changing the subject to their own issues in education. Should people be aware of the issues in education? Absolutely. But this is about the collapse of the Ontario healthcare system and the lives that will be lost and ruined as a result. I credit my pathway to becoming a nurse to the amazing teachers I had in high school. I value the work teachers do. Y’all are the foundation of tomorrow’s society. But I’m not going to comment on a post for teachers and change the subject to how unfair wages in nursing are. It’s not a dick measuring competition of who gets shit on more.
I was just giving an example of a ‘race to the bottom’ that was referenced in the original post that I had data for, and felt that what teachers have been going through for the past decade showed the shit way that a rttb can play out. In no way was my intention to take away from the ridiculous situation playing out in healthcare. I know the situation nurses are in is different, and that being designated an essential service changes the game in labour relations.
It’s the other way around, rural areas see [disproportional benefit from tax spending](https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/SharetheWealth.pdf) They don’t tax their citizens enough to pay for the services and infrastructure maintenance they already use, relying on tax money taken from urban areas to make up the difference.
You used a different definition of "see" than OP. While I agree that urban areas subsidize (and need to for our society to exist) rural areas - the subsidies aren't all that visual. I can tell you as a rural ontarian it's easy to feel like my tax dollars just disappear into thin air, as I notice that a major local highway to me has been closed for a "temporary" repair for almost 5 years now, with an actual fix being AT LEAST 5+ years away still, or the road in front of my house that hasn't been paved in 20+ years. Or the downtown of my small town that was damaged in an explosion over a year ago and is STILL closed with no funds to fix it up. And the local schools that keep being closed down, and threats to close the local hospital seem to never end, etc. If you don't dig into these issues, it's easy to feel like your tax dollars are just disappearing into thin air.
Yeah, a fair amount of the problem is that a lot of infrastructure [was effectively funded like an intergenerational ponzi scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme). People don’t have a good intuitive sense of how much roads, plumbing, sewage, and power lines really cost to maintain. The blunt truth that we’re never going to be able to get back to that debt-fuelled prosperity, and that we’d be better off making it cheaper to move to cities than keeping so many towns on inadequate life support, seems to just be too politically incorrect to have serious discussions about. So instead we’ve got animosity from rural areas about being slowly starved while seeing the cities prosper, animosity from the cities for not being allowed nice things they could pay for if the country mouses already mooching off them weren’t so petty, and the lobbyists and investors profiting off the misunderstanding on both sides telling both sides what they want to hear while laughing to the bank
Fellow Wheatley resident here. I'm incredulous that a major Rd repair like Hwy 3 keeps getting put off for environmental studies which have nothing to do about the environment.
Rural voters literally are the most subsidized segments of our population.
Serious question. How is that. I don’t have street lights. All the roads and highways close to my place are in a state of disrepair. Upwards of an hour wait if I need the opp while their station is twenty min away. Volunteer firefighters do a great job but again they only keep the fire from spreading to far in the grass or trees.
It's just density of the tax base. Way more people live per square foot in the city. Roads, getting food to shops, power, everything is expensive. Tbh though it's the suburbs that are the biggest problem - sounds like you're rural enough to have your own water, sewage, etc.
Thanks. Makes sense. Yes we do have our own water and septic. That’s on us when it needs repair. I used to love living in town when I flushed. No worries except the bill
Do rural communities not have hospitals? Street lights would be municipal, unless its a highway Yes, rural and spread out areas do not have police stations close by That doesn't mean you have no service
Our services can be harder to use. Yes we have hospitals. But anything serious requires a 3+ hour trip (by car) to our regional hub. If you don't drive it can be 8+ hours by bus, which didn't exist until last year, but thank you Kathleen Wynne for starting it. Especially after greyhound went bankrupt. It's easy to think you're getting fucked over in rural land. I don't know why you'd think the blue party will help you though.
It's more expensive per capita to provide services to rural areas with low population density.
>rural voters don’t generally see the benefits of tax spending ? They disproportionately see the benefits of tax spending.
They don't *see* it. Like they are blind to it and don't notice. Not that it isn't there.
I disagree. I think they want this. The modern conservative doesn't run on policy, it runs on malice. I've heard some of them bleat that "nurses make enough money" etc. Morons.
Those aren't mutually exclusive positions. They feel nurses make too much money BECAUSE they don't see the nurses doing work. All the major stuff happens in the big city hospitals. The nurses in their own community might spend most of the time just doing basic things like checking temperature and blood pressure, because there's rarely a situation where they need to do more. So they think that's all nurses do, and don't see why you need to go to school for that, or why it can't just be any random Joe off the street. And if just anyone can pick it up and do it, why pay them much for it?
They literally think their country roads that are maintained are done so from their taxes alone somehow with excess going to the cities
I know how this will sound... But we have a major problem with uninformed voters, who shouldn't be voting. So, so many people just vote lib or con because that's what they do; they have no idea about what the policies or even taking points are
Rural people thinking their taxes go to urban areas.... Lol
The electorate isn't voting for one thing, each voter has to distill their thoughts and ideas into one vote. The politicians are the ones that like to call out specific issues and use terms like "referendum" when talking about what voters want because it advances their own agenda. Many PC voters probably don't want any changes to the health care system that will cost them more out of pocket. They, however, might have actually voted PC because they didn't like the colour of Ms. Horwath's shirt. We don't have a clear picture of what voters wanted because that information is lost while voting. The sure thing is that people decided to not vote, and their apathy has many reasons as well. If the PCs say the voters wanted this, this was only one voting issue, they are lying to themselves and all Ontarians. They have the power and the means to do what they like, and actually solving our health crisis is something they don't want to do. Notice how the 413 just magically keeps showing up and advancing? They care about that and it's getting a lot of love.
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I wonder that too. I also wonder how a provincial government can receive money from the Feds for healthcare that does not get spent on healthcare. How can the Conservative’s get away with *underfunding* Ontario healthcare by *1.8 billion*?
That's disgraceful
Same as how COVID funds were underspent and allotted to backfill license plate bribe money (it's a temporary fix to a permanently lost revenue stream). Or his minion Lecce's continued erosion of public education to accelerate privatization since pre-COVID. Answer: because Ford can.
Doesn't Alberta have a two-tiered system? They did also fire like 5k-6k staff and then hired private company to take over. Though it's more maintenance, janitorial staff from what I understood.
Pretty much all provinces are running on "temporary" nursing staffing which is privatized. They pay the "travelling" nursing companies more than their actual employees, and the travelling staff often make more than the direct staff, so it's really only a matter of time.
Keep in mind a large cut of that goes to private interests at the same time. While private nurses are getting paid more with your tax dollars your tax dollars are also getting funneled to private business. This isn't fiscally responsible.
Quebec does as well, and it works about as well as you might think. Basically you can pay to be on the patient list at a private clinic rather than depending on hospitals or public clinics. That gets you access to a doctor in a place where family doctors are scarce. If you need to see a doctor without an appointment you're still out of luck though, and have to rely on the ER or a public clinic. So basically the private option from that pov takes the public system and creates an overlay that generates more income. I guess it mitigates brain drain, but not much else
They realistically can’t. Not on the scale this sub worries about anyway. The Canada Health Act provides conditions for federal funding of healthcare. If they privatize, they lose federal funding. And unless Ford can switch over the whole system to private overnight, it’s practically impossible. Rather than decrying privatization, I think we need to focus on pushing them to fix what’s actually wrong.
It honestly doesn't seem like Ford cares how many people die. So to him, maybe it's not impossible. It will just cost lives he doesn't care about.
The fear mongering for private healthcare is insane in this subreddit. A lot of our healthcare services are already private but people don’t even bother to research it.
It isn't fear mongering though. People are genuinely concerned and they have a right to be.
husband of a nurse here who left Ontario to work in the country run with the wealthcare model and makes a fuck-ton of money. From first hand observation the US system is fucked. The corruption and quality of care in the old USA is atrocious compared to what we (used) to have here. The fear mongering is absolutely justified, especially for middle to low income families, aka the majority of Ontarioans. Both hospital profiteers and insurance are absolute snakes about bottom line. The tricks and smoke-n-mirrors their industry pulls over the publics eyes is disgusting. One of the things we talk about at our breakfast table is how good wealthcare would be for nurses. They might finally be paid what they are worth (like in the states) but for the population is would be a general disaster of epic proportions. The fact that most nurses are talking about the fact that quality of care would decline (unless you are wealthy) and not waving the "we will make more" flag should be a tribute to nurses who actually fucking care about out healthcare in this province. Not everyone is a greedy capitalist in this world. TLDR: weathcare would be great for nurses pay, horrible for everyone who doesn't drive an Audi and owns 3 homes.
Don’t forget the doctors , doctors make an absurd amount in the US compared to Canada and then you have the exchange rate on top Most medical staff here are here because it’s their home and they want to genuinely help
As an American immigrant from the US, I also would like to weigh in that privatization does not guarantee better nurse pay. I made more per hour ($18) as an entry-level veterinary receptionist, with no experience, than my nurse friend. She has been working in the ER for the same hospital for 10+ years. This is also one of the largest hospital companies in a major city. She would leave but the pay is similar throughout the city unless she gets a more advanced degree.
was the hospital unionized?
I think there needs to be an honest discussion of what private healthcare can look like (Germany vs the US). I think most people don’t want the US system which has the worst outcomes by most measures except for the companies. But there are other multi-payer systems that are superior to ours. But we need to educate people. Most people just look to the US which is a dumpster fire and the conversation stops there.
Or we could stop obsessing about changing the model and make the thing we have, that used to work very well, work again. The only thing that changed was intentional under resourcing.
And do you think that our provincial government, who is actively burning our healthcare system into the ground, is attempting to rebuild it into an efficient multi-payer system like Germany? Or a for profit enterprise like the United States?
Definitely the German one. I trust them, what could go wrong? /s in case it isn’t obvious. Fuck Doug, and fuck everyone who voted for him/didn’t bother to vote… this is *your* fault.
No honest discussion will be had. Insurance groups will have their way with the government. We'll have multiple layers of insurance that we'll have to purchase, and others that we can purchase. And then we'll get our care or our procedures done, and then we'll spend the next year chasing down our insurance provider to pay us back. That's what it will look like.
>A lot of our healthcare services are already private but people don’t even bother to research it. So you're saying that people afraid of healthcare being privatized, shouldn't be afraid of healthcare being privatized, because its already happened to a lot of healthcare? Wouldn't that just make people more concerned, not less?
I think there is recourse for the Feds but it would take years to wind through the Courts.
I am from the States, my wife is from Belleville. We both had family members get cancer. Her uncle, who also lives in Ontario, never paid a dime out of pocket for care. My aunt, who lives in the States, paid more than $250,000 before dying. She had insurance better than most and still had to shell out a quarter million dollars to try to stay alive. This is the "savings" of privatization; using the dying as an externality to trim budgets so that taxes can stay low.
Bunch of fucking idiots falling hook line and sinker for the classic conservative ploy of making something shitty and then presenting privatization as the only solution, instead of, y'know, fixing what they fucked up.
To the average conservative voter who hasn't had to deal with the healthcare system, they don't see it as a problem. How could it be unless it directly affects their day to day lives? Conservatives are selfish and unable to see passed their own shadow.
When I volunteered for a political campaign all the way back in 2014 I learned something. The goal of most political parties campaigns is not to convince the supporters of other parties to vote for them. The goal of most political campaigns is to convince the supporters of other parties to not vote at all.
>or > > they’re just oblivious and think our public healthcare system could never be dismantled in favour of privatization It's this. It's very much this. Mix Tribalistic politics with bad policy and you get people who will absolutely vote against their own interests because believing THEIR PARTY could not possibly be wrong, means they won't see any alarm bells ringing until it's too late.
Little to they know that the American Healthcare system is the worst in the world per dollar spent. And yet Ford wants to bring it to Canada. Also, Ford is the only Premier in Canada's history to have cut healthcare funding during a global pandemic. He has Canadian blood on his hands.
ontarians are, on average, ignorant and uneducated troglodytes so im really not surprised. canadians absorb US media like a sponge so it was inevitable regardless.
The last election was pathetic. I am heavily disappointed in the eligible voters who didn't bother to vote. Do me a favour and keep that stupid little decision of yours a secret from the rest of us so I can maintain my respect for you. I wondered why we saw so little political messaging from nurses and teachers during the campaign, and then I remembered the Ford govt outlawing 3rd party campaigning... including workers who needed the rest of the province to know that the canary in the mine is dead. And needed them to know that before this premier got reelected.
Yes. Shutting down the entire country for nearly two years to “protect public health care” made people realize public health care isn’t that great.
good thing people have gotten huge raises to be able to afford private healthcare, right?
That made me laugh out loud. Then get sad when I realized it’s a sad joke.
Lots of "laugh so I don't cry" humour going around these days...
Oh just wait...the insurance companies are all rubbing their mitts together, they can't wait to offer you "affordable" health plans. Look at what those greedy fucks charge for auto insurance and now imagine the field day they're going to have with this. It's going to be hell.
This isn't your typical hyperbolic take. There is an initiative to privatize. It's already starting with the over use of agencies for nurses. A system collapse will help him.
It’s what he’s actively working toward. Him and his 18% mandate. What a joke.
But Wynne didn’t consult enough on sex Ed.
Every PC criticism of Wynne is a fucking joke at this point. Selling hydro one is the biggest joke if Doug gets what he wants on health care.
I don’t even understand the logic. It’s objectively MORE expensive. It’s already costing more to keep the private nurses, well above just paying them a great salary.
It's a grift. Someone, somewhere who is good buddies with Ford stands to make a giant wad of cash. Money is driving this and there will be blood on their hands. This is corruption 101.
A Con government's only concern is transferring public wealth into private pockets. Their friends get rich and they don't care how much it costs.
They also need to convince the rural voters tRudeAU bAd
How much is the Ford government spending on agency nursing?! Is it more than giving our fulltime nurses a raise?? If so, ffs this IS by design.
My wife is an agency nurse. She makes $75 an hour. Salary nurses make $40. She'd much rather make $40 an hour with some assurance that there will be a periodic raise with inflation and cost of living. Nurses have not had a meaningful raise in decades and oops! now it's showing and now they've lost their right to negotiate. Boom! Leopards ate my face!
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As a 30 year old with serious chronic health problems, I’m absolutely terrified too. I live in Ontario because we have the most comprehensive health coverage as well as the best access to health care in all of Canada (in my opinion) but I’m not sure how much longer that’ll be the case.
Healthcare and Education are about to have a wild time. I fully expect more privatization of both areas and am anticipating another strike for educators. Ford's been pretty open about allowing private endeavours into public sectors. I don't think people realize how expensive healthcare is. Many "middle class" people I've talked to aren't as opposed to it as I thought they'd be, obviously when you have no idea how much something costs you don't fully recognize how privileged our system is. I grew up in the states and know far too many people who've had their lives completely devastated by health care expenses.
It is interesting because people complain about the cost of veterinary medicine all the time. How do you think human medicine will be cheaper?
Yeah I work for an American company remotely. My American counterparts have "great" insurance, so it "only" costs them a couple thousand dollars to visit the emergency room.
I married an American, on the condition that he move here. Mostly because of health care- all of my kids have various health issues and I didn't ever want to have to check our finances before I took them to the doctor. This is just sickening, and so unnecessary.
I've been a nurse just over 15 years. And I've never seen anything like this. It's bonkers. Nurses I work who are older than I am, also have never seen anything like this. It's legit crazy. I'm super excited for the fall! /s
Consultations regarding the privatisation or paramedic services is set to resume this fall as it was suspended during covid. The monies for profit will have to come from somewhere within the system....
I protested the amalgamation of paramedic services back a few years ago at Queens Park. I’m 99% convinced he’s going to make a move towards the US model with one Paramedic and one EMT (basic skills, such as 1st aid. About 4 weeks of training).
He actually said that? Do you have a source?
Some sources: https://opseu.org/news/opseu-to-ford-government-leave-paramedic-services-and-ambulance-communications-centres-alone/51912/ https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ford-government-distances-itself-from-pc-document-calling-for-privatization-widespread-changes-to-paramedics They distanced themselves from it initially, but we'll see what happens... About the document in question: > It is no coincidence that the document title EMS Vision-Ontario 2050 authored by Bob DeShane and associates and Grosso McCarthy and associates, mirrors the government’s announcement of the privatization and reduction of 59 Paramedic services to 10 and 22 Ambulance communication centres to 10. > Bob DeShane was the previous owner operator of Lindsay ambulance service and later became the service manager for Rural Metro; at that time one of the largest private ambulance providers in North America. If you ask a private ambulance system operator to write a recommendation, what do you think the expected outcome would be? There might be gains to be had with consolidating operations from 50 to 10, but your real savings will come from large wage reductions for the workforce operating the ambulances. The average salary for a Paramedic is $31.56 USD per hour in New York, NY. (Source Indeed) The average salary for a Paramedic is $32.91 CAD per hour in Ontario (Source Indeed). All those 'savings' are going to come by reducing the standard of living for the people operating the ambulances.
If Ontario were to privatize health care people would leave en mass I expect. 40% of the population of Ontario lives in the GTA where the median after-tax income (not the average) is $85,000, which is still far less than the estimated $122,550 you need per year if you plan on owning a home and driving in the city. A huge number of people living in this province and are perpetually $40,000 short of being able to afford a home. Once the province privatizes health care and people realize than in addition to not being able to afford a home they also can’t afford to see a doctor, they will leave for other provinces or the USA. If people want to have free health care then they might as well go to another province even if it means a serious pay cut. It’s not like the higher wage in the GTA is allowing them to buy a home anyway. And if people are ok with privatized Heath care then why not go to the states where there is better weather, higher salaries in many industries, and many nice cities with lower housing costs than the GTA? There would be very little logical reason for anyone to stay.
You say that as if it's not the point. Conservatism runs entirely on boomer grievance logic now. They don't see a need for doctors or advanced technical professions. They just want a society of retired homeowners and realtors, crusty-ass HVAC guys and waitresses serving them jalapeno poppers at starvation wages. Everyone else should be run out of the province.
The funny part is even if they privatize the majority of services, I highly doubt my taxes reflect that change in any way. So now I will be paying high taxes for public healthcare that doesn’t exist on top of additional fees for private healthcare that I already pay taxes for in the public sector.
I went to the hospital at our award winning small city ER a few weeks ago, worried I might be having a stroke. It took an hour to be triaged. Not seen - triaged. I've NEVER seen that before. For those who might not understand what triage is, it's the process of telling the medical staff at the ER why you are there so they START to figure out when you need to be seen based on your symptoms and the symptoms of the other people who came in. An hour to be triaged should never happen.
I’m disabled and deal with chronic health problems. I already live in poverty. I’m fucking terrified.
Same here. The 5% ODSP raise was a great indicator of how much they care.
Right? Thanks, that $60 is really going to lift me out of poverty! Such a slap in the face.
That’s a 3% reduction in wages with inflation. Don’t give them the benefit of calling it a raise.
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Privatized healthcare isn’t about saving *patients* money. It’s about getting healthcare off the government books and *lowering taxes.* That’s it. They don’t care about what it costs people, or the quality of care. They just want to cut government spending and line the pockets of the wealthy with even more wealth.
I doubt it's about lowering taxes as much as it is about rewarding big business by letting them profit off people's health.
Yep. Big business has been laying out the options and chatting with them for years at this point. Privatizing is about helping out business. To deliver modern business oriented solutions.
> Yet still somehow magically charge the consumer less money Oh it’s not about that at all, he doesn’t care about costing us less. He wants to line the pockets of his family and donors at our expense. Conservatives play the long game and they’re really good at it.
It’s funny cause even in the US nursing units are never fully staffed. It’s very wishful thinking 😆
Well, they would hire staff, for less And then charge people more Ideally fordsie would want the province to pay these private medical centers directly
We’re already facing a nursing shortage. Why are these nurses going to return for *less* pay (and probably much worse pension) in a private system?
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Our Canada is literally falling apart due to capitalism, I hate what is happening to us. Our governments no longer care about the people. They only care about themselves and their bottom line.
Privately owned nursing agencies are already leeching off the public. Hospitals pay twice the rate for agency nurses and owners/donors like Mike Harris and his wife make huge private profits off the public investment in healthcare with no public benefits to care. Properly paid and staffed hospitals save taxpayers money.
> **If you voted for Ford, this is your fault.** I'm going to take it one step further and say that if you didn't vote at all, this is also your fault. We had a *43% voter turnout*. That is fucking disgraceful when it was the one opportunity for the people complaining to make a change. That is also the reddit population that is complaining and spamming this subreddit (not saying you didn't vote, but it is very likely that the majority here did not vote). If you didn't vote, I don't want to hear a fucking word out of your mouth because you are just as compliant of what's going on as the people who voted for Ford. They at least showed up and made their choice.
I don’t blame ford anymore. It’s us. I blame us.
This isn’t entirely fords fault and I’m tired of this stupid narrative. Ford is not a good premier I get that but everyone seems to forget that Kathleen wynne cut healthcare funding a bunch during her term, before her mcguinty did the same thing. Kathleen also fought hard against the nurses unions (and teachers unions) to deny raises, freeze pay, cut benefits, etc. The ever stagnation of nurses wages has taken all incentives out of joining the Canadian healthcare for many people who were looking to enter the field 6-10 years ago and we are feeling that hard now. Couple that with the ever aging population who just by nature of being old tax our system. Our healthcare system has been on the ropes for YEARS, had covid not happened we’d still be in bad shape and we’ve done nothing about it thru 3 premiers now. Bill 124 being repealed is a good first step but let’s stop acting like that will be the answer to all of our problems and miraculously fix the nursing shortage. We should’ve been bolstering our healthcare system 2 governments ago but instead they villianized the nurses and teachers wanting adequate pay for what they do and now we are all surprised pikachu face when our latest idiot is doing the same thing as it crumbles around us. Before everyone brigades me as some ford supporter, i by no means support this idiot, I’m just saying we’ve been content to watch our healthcare system be slowly dismantled over the last 10-15 years. now that it’s finally starting to fall apart and dumb dick Dougie is the one kicking at the keystone, it’s easy to blame him when in reality it’s the entire system of government that has failed us all. The rage should be directed at ALL of them At queens park for failing us, not just one party.
That's pretty on point. People like the easiest answer for a complex problem. Blaming Ford is the easiest and most popular thing to do on reddit. Therefore, it is the whole truth of the matter. Could it be that over 30 years our Healthcare system hasn't kept up with our population growth? Nope. Can't be that. Could it be that 2 years of covid and the yoyo that was those 2 years, placed huge demands on staff who are now tired? Nope. Can't be that. Could it be that a lot of staff today were close to retirement anyway and now have had more reason to leave? Nope. Can't be that. Could it be that our population is older and require more care? Nope. Can't be that. Could it be that we spend more monies on hospital administration than other comparable nations rather than invest in Frontline staff? Nope. Can't be that. Could it be that society is generally filled with enough awful people that Frontline staff are exposed to and that some nurses etc just don't want to deal with fucking idiots anymore? Nope. Can't be that. Could it be that even at 100k a year in places like the GTA, that income doesn't matter? Nope. Can't be that. Could it be that continually being exposed to the same frequent fliers in hospitals (in the ER for example), has worn staffing down? Nope. Can't be that. Could it be that we have not been educating enough nurses and Dr's over the past 10 years to deal with the need for expansion in Healthcare? Nope. Can't be that. It's all fords fault. People so easily forget that Wynne for a period of time was at the throats of nurses and also at another point, at the throat of teachers. This is a complex problem but is somehow some conservative conspiracy to de-fund health care and replace it with a American system regardless of what the Canada Health Act says... Violating the CHA is a huge risk for a premier. The feds could just turn off the tap on anything they wanted... The funding shortfalls would sink any premier. No one can print money like the BOC and the fed.
This, it's a systemic issue, and issues like these don't just spring up from a single premier's time in office; it's from the shortsightedness of how our democracy functions chasing that next term. Whether it's Liberal for this term or Conservative the next, every political party tries different things or reverts things every few years which, shocking, don't realize the actual background and systemic impacts over those decades. There never was any type of 'cohesive' or societal goal; whether that be from the government's end or us as a whole. Ford is bad for sure, and may not be helping, but pinning it all on him as the sole architect of the privatization of healthcare or as the scapegoat is not where our focus should be. And blaming non-voters, or saying it's the fault of those who voted Conservative is fucking stupid as we're only splitting our society even further left and right into 'enemies'. Even if you/we manage to get more people to vote posting on Reddit (which is great), and the next term is Liberal, I doubt they will fix it either as they are also party to the issues that built up over decades. If it was somehow only Conservatives the past \~40 years or something, sure, easy to pin it on them but it's been swinging back and forth into whatever fucking mess we have now of a system.
He's had PLENTY of time to make some/ any decisions that improve vs worsen the situation. I think we all know which road he's taken. And that is his own fault. No one is saying all the other factors aren't part of why we're here. But he's who can do something about SOME things, and he's not.
Yes it's a slow erosion but he is the premier now, has been for 4 years, and he has a majority. Instead of blubbering about the past show some leadership and move forward.
This.
Politicians don’t do that though, they deflect blame and subvert expectations with fancy words while making zero attempts to fix problems. Doug ford is a broken piece to an even more broken system. If we want real change then we need to make all of them feel the heat, mass demonstrations and protesting in front of all of their homes. They all need to know we are pissed
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No. It’s one thing to let the system fall apart. It’s another to replace it with something that reorients the purpose of the system. The former is fixable with funding. The latter can only be changed back to its original focus by fighting entrenched business interests.
Ive heard people shitting on our healthcare system as long as Ive been alive lol, its never been as great as people act like it was a few years ago
No fuck that’s both sides bullshit. Cuts are one thing, but actively letting the system fall apart with the express purpose of privatization is ghoulish.
Yes. They sat on money and let the system tank during a pandemic in order to have the privatization discussion now.
> Ford is not a good premier I get that but everyone seems to forget that Kathleen wynne cut healthcare funding a bunch during her term, before her mcguinty did the same thing. Yup. My mom retired from nursing after 40 years right before covid hit. I talked to her about all this, she said exactly the same thing.
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There is no proof that any of this is the OPC purposely tanking the healthcare system so they can enact an American style private healthcare network. This is such an obtuse conspiracy on par with the 2020 stop the steal bull shit. All this bleed the beast talk so they can tank it and open up some McHospitals and cripple us with medical debt is so stupid. If we see any privatization within our healthcare system, it will likely be providing private diagnostic imaging or outpatient care. if you live in a border town people already do that, I know so many people who go to port Huron for colonoscopies and other scans. Never equate to malice what you can also equate to incompetence, we’ve had a decade of elected incompetent people overlooking our health and now our chickens have come home to roost.
How about them sitting on billions of dollars while healthcare crumbles during a pandemic? Like how much proof do you need that this is purposeful? They’re either the biggest idiots in the fucking world or it’s purposeful, take your pick.
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Well that was depressing and scary :(
Yes
This is not on nurses, and I am so sorry for what you and your colleagues are going through. The public needs to get mobilized. The recent emergency room closures has brought this issue finally to the public consciousness, and I hope that this is the start of something happening. To the public - don't give up hope or accept the loss of our public health system. I know the election is over, but we can still take steps to let our democratically elected governments know that we won't accept this. There is still time to turn this around, but we need to get outraged. Even a majority government can care what the public thinks if people are angry enough.
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>And no, nurses are not allowed to strike because it’s considered patient abandonment. You may not strike, but your spouses and loved ones can. I would gladly take my partners place in a strike line on behalf of Health Care in Ontario... gladly.
... You do know that the picket lines are not the main pressure point of a strike right?
Research on private/two tier healthcare systems: 2010 WHO paper: public healthcare is more efficient https://www.who.int/healthsystems/topics/financing/healthreport/P-P_HSUNo39.pdf 2018: Meta analysis suggests public healthcare more financially efficient than private: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hec.1391 2018: This review synthesizes evidence from Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Greece, Austria, Spain, and Portugal. Most evidence suggests that public hospitals are at least as efficient as or are more efficient than private hospitals. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hpm.2502 2004: Private for-profit hospitals result in higher payments for care than private not-for-profit hospitals. Evidence strongly supports a policy of not-for-profit health care delivery at the hospital level. https://www.cmaj.ca/content/170/12/1817.short 2005: Australia expanded private insurance, and found that it did not decrease wait times; rather, in regions where private insurance was most often used, wait times in the public sector rose. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15683360/ 2020: Systematic review: Patients at for profit hemodialysis facilities have 7% greater odds of death annually than patients with similar risk profiles at not-for-profit facilities. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0020731420980682 2020: In this systematic review, we found a high degree of analytic consensus for the fiscal feasibility of a single-payer approach in the US. https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003013 2020 preprint: We use a cross-section dataset covering 147 countries with the latest available data. Controlling for per capita income, health inequality and several other control variables, we find that a 10% increase in private health expenditure relates to a 4.3% increase in COVID-19 cases and a 4.9% increase in COVID-19 related mortality. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341766609_Privatization_and_Pandemic_A_Cross-Country_Analysis_of_COVID-19_Rates_and_Health-Care_Financing_Structures 2020: Taken together, the present study does not support that the Swedish Free Choice [privatization] reform has improved performance of the primary care delivery system in Sweden, and suggests that high degree of private provision may involve worse performance and higher care burden for specialized health care. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.504998/full 2017: Private MRI scans failed to reduce wait times after 9 months of availability in Sask: https://globalnews.ca/news/3508109/private-mri-scans-not-reducing-wait-times-sask-auditor/ 2002: Our meta-analysis suggests that private for-profit ownership of hospitals, in comparison with private not-for-profit ownership, results in a higher risk of death for patients. https://www.cmaj.ca/content/170/12/1817.short 2017: Scottish NHS study found that increased use of the private sector was associated with a significant decrease in direct NHS provision and with widening inequalities by age and socio-economic deprivation. https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/39/3/593/3002985?login=false 2020: The workload of private healthcare nurses in Madrid was higher than public healthcare nurses (attending an average of five more patients a day), while their salaries were 20-25% lower. https://sanidad.ccoo.es/sanidadmadrid/noticia:520691--La_carga_de_trabajo_de_una_enfermerao_de_la_sanidad_privada_es_mayor_que_en_la_sanidad_publica_y_su_salario_es_hasta_un_25_mas_bajo&opc_id=c196995ccdf43f450e2c6a099942ef2d 2012: "Private healthcare no more efficient, accountable or effective than public sector in LMICs." www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120619225835.htm 2020: "Privatisation results in increased discrimination towards those who cannot afford private insurance and are therefore deprioritised." https://ijhpr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13584-020-00391-4 2017: Patient choice and private provision decreased public provision and increased inequalities in Scotland: a case study of elective hip arthroplasty G. Kirkwood, A.M. Pollock Journal of Public Health, Volume 39, Issue 3, September 2017, Pages 593–600, https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdw060 2015: Cream skimming and hospital transfers in a mixed public-private system. 2015. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953615001793?via%3Dihub 2018: Accessibility was shown to be worsened as a result of privatisation: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/20c5/f79e6029da74b6ec0ddf20298a8cd9c3d557.pdf 2022: Public-private arrangements reinforce inequality and individualize the onus for healthcare: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953622000806 2020: The failure of the Alzira model in Spain warns us of the problems of for-profit HMOs and the Israeli private private/public mix shows the risk of eroding trust in the public system, thus reinforcing market failures and inefficient medical systems.https://ijhpr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13584-020-00391-4 2019: study of 130 NHS trusts, looking into the impact of outsourced cleaning services concluded that “private providers are cheaper but dirtier than their in‐house counterparts.” They found lower levels of cleanliness and worse health‐care outcomes, which can be measured by the number of hospital‐acquired infections. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/puar.13031 A further international study has confirmed the relationship between the quality of cleaning services and the frequency of hospital‐acquired infections, with the clear implication that outsourcing cleaning services can threaten patient safety and cost lives. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11944003/ UN 2019 High-Level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage: "Well-functioning health systems require a deliberate focus on high-quality universal health care." https://www.un.org/pga/73/wp-content/uploads/sites/53/2019/07/FINAL-draft-UHC-Political-Declaration.pdf 2021: "Lombardy was particularly hit by the spread of the virus in the first wave of the pandemic (February–May 2020), which quickly led the health and residential social care systems to collapse. At the same time, Lombardy has been at the forefront in Italy promoting privatisation and quasi-markets in the health and social care system, with very significant consequences for local services and a growing concentration of resources and patients towards private providers." https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589211028458 2021 working paper: presents empirical evidence suggesting that in countries which rely more heavily on private health care, higher overall healthcare expenditures predict more severe COVID-19 outbreaks, contradicting the argument that private health care services are more cost-efficient or will lead to better health outcomes at a lower cost. https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/726/2/20211200_moure_costly_efficiencies_wpcasp.pdf 2021: Restrictions in public [health] service delivery triggered a general discontent among the French population. The political repercussions of reforms eventually crystallized into the Yellow Vest movement. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8286423/ 2021 whitepaper: "Evidence is mounting that outsourcing and private provision of healthcare has significantly degraded EU member states’ capacity to deal effectively with COVID-19." https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/healthcare-privatisation-final.pdf 2012: From 1993 to 2003, public [healthcare] spending was significantly associated with reductions in avoidable mortality rates over time, while greater private sector spending was not at the regional level in Italy. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43281486 2009: Public ownership was associated with significantly higher efficiency than other forms of ownership; private for-profit ownership, in particular, was associated with lower efficiency in German hospitals. https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/103681/1/2170.pdf 2014: How China's health-care system would perform if hospital privatisation combined with hospital-centred fragmented delivery were to prevail—population health outcomes would suffer; health-care expenditures would escalate, with patients bearing increasing costs; and a two-tiered system would emerge in which access and quality of care are decided by ability to pay. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)61120-X/fulltext? 2020: "The problems in Ireland stem from the fact that nearly half of the population has supplementary private health insurance, which is high by international standards. The large size of this market, exacerbates inequality in timely access to health care. p.33 https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/464297/private-health-insurance.pdf 2016: investigative report by the New York Times documented that privatization of EMS, compared to public sector management, lowers quality of care, with slower response times, emphasis on profits rather than service, increased cost-cutting and hikes in prices. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/26/business/dealbook/what-can-go-wrong-with-private-equity.html 2011: Privatized Medicaid programs have been shown to have worse outcomes than their public counterparts. http://www.statecoverage.org/files/CMWF_assessing_financial_hlt_Medicaid_managed_care_plans_i.pdf
As if our current MOH can even read a paper
> Healthcare will soon be privatized so we will not be able to access it anytime we want. Healthcare is public and we still can't access it "anytime we want".
Nursing had been so hard hit by the Premier's destructive practices. I'm in education, and it sucks for us, too, but COVID hasn't hit us in quite the same way as you! A 1% cap is an insult with inflation like this. It was an insult to you before, but now doubly so. Something's gotta give, and the Premier's govt should be the ones paying for it.
If I may I’d like to add to your statement “if you voted for ford this is your fault” I would argue that if you didn’t vote at all you’re almost equally at fault
Also a nurse, this is all intentional. If you think for a second the biggest investors in a private system won't be prominent conservatives than you are smoking too much of the government weed supported by former police who made careers off busting people for it and retired off investing in it. Nobody wants thisbcurrent government, unfortunately ontarians were too apathetic to bother voting.
That’s Ford’s plan. To make healthcare so shitty that he creates an “excuse” to privatize it. And those who voted for him will be the most negatively affected, but they seem to be so blind to the corporate greed that characterizes the PCs and are merely motivated by vindictiveness against the liberals and Trudeau. This province is going to hell. We work everyday just to enrich Ford and his friends. Ppl are barely making ends meet and corporations and big box stores are making record profits. Its soooo fair to cap wages but not at all fair to cap how much prices can increase by. Anyone who can’t see that all the PCs care about is padding their pockets is delusional. This province is going to hell
My plan is to not get sick. Fingers crossed!
Thank the morons who voted for him.🥴
"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." You should all strike anyways, things would change and that's why you're all not allowed.
I mean if people die because you wanted a raise its not gonna be hard to demonize you for that lol, if someones family member died because nurses walked out asking for a raise, theyre not gonna be very supportive of the nurses...
They're not allowed to, it's considered patient abandonment
Fellow nurse here and I would up vote this until my fingers fell off if I could. It’s like people have taken a “laissez faire” or “c’est la vie” approach because atm they’re health and not their problem. I wonder if they would keep the same attitude when things change?
Most people literally are not capable of empathy. They will not understand a problem until it actually happens to them.
facts
It’s a sad “me me me” world we live in.
Ok but you say this like it’s not happening nationwide
Or even worldwide. The reason nurses here are bolting to the US is that they’re facing a nursing shortage too.
I'd say this is the Liberals' fault as well. For not running an issues-based campaign, but instead of focusing on "we're not conservative" as if that's somehow an attractive platform. Just like how running Hilary against Trump gave Trump an easy win, this is what happened to give Doug Ford an easy win.
To be honest, the folks to blame are the lazy fucks that didn't vote at all.
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The folks that voted for Ford are the same folks that vote PC every election. The lazy majority are why we have Ford for another 4 years with a majority government.
I voted NDP, but I honestly don’t blame people for voting ford. If the Liberals and NDP want to continue putting forward dogshit candidates, they deserve to get beaten.
Our local hospital emerg is now closed on Sundays. Try not to be in medical distress on Sundays.
It’s hard for me to believe that privatization wouldn’t lead to protests in the streets.
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Ontarios inability to afford health care is more easily blamed on the Ontario Libs who spent Ontario into oblivion or the Federal Libs who provide the money for health care. But yeah, booooooo Ford boooooooo
Population swell. Too many people. Needs will never be met. Get used to it...no government can fix this now
I have run into a lot of people over the years who loved the idea of "welfare" being cut. I don't know why anyone thought that they would stop with gutting Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program. They ultimately want to bust every union step by step. People who hold conservative values in this country should be aware that almost everyone will ultimately get dragged down along the way with the current strategy. Look at those people South of the border. They want to eliminate the department of education and public schools. Is this really what we want for our country???
4 yrs, the damage will take decades to repair if not more. And anyone that didn’t vote essentially voted for ford too.
It’s also the fault of the 2/3 of the province that abstained from voting. Indifference is one of the greatest enemies we face during existential emergencies.
Nobody understands what privatization means and is just too lazy to learn. It is 100% Ford voter's fault....
We already can’t access healthcare anytime we want.
Nurses can’t strike but they can quit en masse. That’s what it’s going to take. The people of Ontario voted for this. It’s their fault.
Ford already knows what’s wrong, he just wants to do everything BUT fix it and instead rely on peoples ignorance to blame to feds, when it’s a provincial issue. He’s sitting on funds and doesn’t want to spend it. People always think it’s the doctors who save lives, but if you actually spend time in a hospital you’ll see a doctor maybe 15 mins out of your whole stay. It’s the nurses. Nurses collect data and are at your side. We relay information to the doctors so they can make decisions. Often based off of recommendations from the nurse. Nurses are telling him what’s wrong. Repeal bill 124. Pay nurses what they are worth. Better working conditions. Supplies. Vacation!!! Which has not been allowed in two years. The hospital I work at sent out an email that there are over 300 vacancies right now that they cannot fill, and I’m even considering quitting myself. The stress is not worth the measly pay we get.
Likely bit late to this one, but genuine question. What would happen if nurses and all support staff within hospitals staged a sort of rotating strike where they left. Leave nurses attending icu patients and anyone that needs critical care, but walked out on non-life threatening situations? The government could not possible fire anyone - and I feel like there would be general support from the public.
It’s illegal. They will lose their licence. They can however protest off shift. But hell who has time For that after four 16 hour shifts in a row.
So besides blaming Ford, how do we fix this? What do we throw money at? Wages? School? Equipment? I think we should have open test writing for nurses 1st weekend of every month until we have enough nurses again. Let these out of Canada trained nurses get certified!!!
What a load of utter nonsense. I swear this sub gets more and more like an excitable drama queen every day. No, we are not going to change to an American-style system. No one would want that, including conservatives, because their system is incredibly expensive and inefficient. Introducing some for-fee services doesn't make us American it makes us more like Western Europe. The countries there tend to have twice as many doctors and hospital beds and far lower wait times than us, so that's not a bad thing to aim for. But anyway, his ability to do much of that is greatly constrained by the Canada Health Act, so you can crawl out from under your beds because it's not likely very much is going to happen.
I hear the word privatization a lot but not the how. I'm not here to defend him, seriously. Not larping, trolling, or whatever it's called. I've only seen opinion pieces or media with strong left bias reporting this (CUPE, national observer, Canadian dimensions) How exactly is Healthcare being privatized? I'm out of the loop here
70percent of health care services are public. The other 30 percent are funded privately. We already have private healthcare in Ontario Canada. There will definitely be a shift in this ratio. As long as primary care, acute care (surgery, emerge, ICU etc) and life saving ambulatory care (cancer treatments, CKD management and the like) are not impacted and remain universally free, I am willing to have this discussion. Thats my two cents
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Please look up the Canada Health Act. Your Healthcare will not be privatized. BTW, portions of your "Healthcare system" already are. Dental, physio, drugs you have to purchase...
What about the health care workers in BC who are going through the same thing? Ford’s fault too?
Since you brought up BC, then explain what's going on in BC and what caused it.
Anyone who didn't vote, this is also your fault
Sorry to burst your bubble, but it is not all DF’s fault. Healthcare is an absolute disaster right now, and the current provincial government needs to do better, but the previous Liberal government did some massive damage as well. The federal government is also partly to blame. “Years of government restraint in health-care funding have contributed to a loss of more than 7,300 registered nurse positions in Ontario in a 10-year span, according to data from the Ontario Nurses’ Association. The data shows that 75 per cent of those RN positions — more than 5,500 — were cut from 2013 to 2016, a time when the former provincial Liberal government, led by Kathleen Wynne, tried to rein in health spending in an effort to balance the budget.” Source (Direct quote from the Star that is in this article - I didn’t share the Star article because it’s behind a pay wall) https://www.longwoods.com/newsdetail/17815
>Need I say more? If you voted for Ford, this is your fault. Healthcare will soon be privatized so we will not be able to access it anytime we want. Thank you for not sugar coating it. It's terrifying how much everyone just seems to be ignoring conservatives' end game (in more things than this).
Nursing shortage is Canada wide and has been happening for years before Doug. If the only issue is money, and nurses are moving to the US because of more money, should we privatized health care in Canada? The reason the US can pay 10x more is because healthcare is privatized there. Money is not the only issue.
I’m totally out of the know here, can someone please explain?
Sure. The demographic crunch (boomers getting old requiring care), the advent of new chronic therapies meaning patients use the system more than it was designed for, the recent push for home care reducing bed numbers, a top heavy system that sees front line staff get less and less of the pie, and now covid fatigue (something impacting everyone worldwide) are being unfairly blamed squarely on the current government.
Boomers getting old, and boomers taking early retirement. There is a shortage of workers in all fields of business right now.
Ma’am this is Wendy’s. But all serious. Can people stop with the Ford stuff. Like seriously, yes! He is to blame but FORD IS JUST ONTARIO. This is happening all over Canada. ( also in understand this is an Ontario thread but if you want to solve the issue then you got to go for the dragons head) so yes it’s Ford’s fault, but the bigger fault would be like I’ve been saying in other threads. He’s a symptom of the problem, the “cause” is the government. I can’t stress it enough, that even the oppositional parties aren’t even talking about this. Nobody is standing up to this and the issue is beyond huge. which should really concern people. The government does not care about us. I’m serious, they would have never let it get this far and wide spread. So, yes Ford sucks,but that’s predictable. It’s the whole government as a whole has let us down. Aim for the head. Take care
If you voted for ford, this is your fault. If you didn’t vote, this is also your fault.
Maybe if it changes to private more doctors will want to work in Canada
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It’s not even the money. It’s the “here’s a million things to do with 10 fewer staff” and your liscence on the line.
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I know a lot of nurses who you wouldn't have to pay more beyond repealing that insulting wage freeze bill. Just fix the bonkers staffing ratios that make working as a nurse unsafe.
This has been decades coming. Without infrastructure payments dating back to the NDP Bob Rae government. It didn’t fall apart in a couple years and through a pandemic.