The Reasons Our Public Health Care Services Should NOT be Privatized

The Ford government has made plans to privatize our public hospitals’ surgeries & diagnostics. 

Why Not Privatize Public Hospital Services?

• For-profit clinics & hospitals provide poorer quality care, hire less qualified staff and direct public funds into profits rather than care.
• Privatization worsens staffing shortages by taking scarce staff from our public hospitals.
• Private clinics take easier & less complex patients, leaving complex cases and heavier care patients to public hospitals with less staff & funding to for them.
• Private clinics/hospitals charge user fees and extra bill patients on top of OHIP for medically necessary services. This is in violation of the Canada Health Act which bans charging patients for medically necessary services. Private clinics/hospitals often charge double or even up to five times the cost in our public health system.

In 1998, Ontario’s Conservative Mike Harris government built 20,000 new long-term care (LTC) beds & allocated the majority to for-profit corporations. 

The Ford government is building more than 30,000 LTC beds and is midstream in awarding more than 18,000 of these beds to for-profit operators, many of them, the worst chain for-profits responsible for thousands of deaths and terrible neglect in the pandemic.

Read the Fact Sheet

Why Not Privatize Long-Term Care?

• For-profit LTC homes spend 24% less on care for residents than non-profit homes.
• For-profit homes have lower staffing & care levels, poor working conditions for staff, high turnover, heavy workloads & lower wages.
• Residents in for-profit homes have poorer health outcomes: they are 25% more likely to be hospitalized & 10% more likely to die. 
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, death rates in forprofit homes were 5-times greater than those of publicly-owned homes & double those of non-profit homes.

In 1996, Conservative Premier Mike Harris brought in forprofit companies to bid for home care services against the non-profit home care providers like the Victorian Order of Nurses.

Over the years, the for-profits took over more home care services including home visits & rehabilitation services. Now, the Ford government is planning to expand the privatization of home care. Bill 175 guts the former home care legislation, including vital protections for patients, and sets up the privatization of the last remaining publicly controlled parts of home care.

Why Not Privatize Home Care?

The consequences of home care privatization have been devastating. They include:

• Severe staffing shortages leading to missed visits in which people are left with no nurse/PSW to provide vital care.
• High staff turnover which means poor quality care provided by strangers, including intimate care.
• Millions of public dollars siphoned off for profit.
• Per hour of home care, for-profits are paid double what they pay the staff who actually provide the care, taking the difference in profits and administration

• In 2019, Ford planned to reduce the number of Public Health Units from 35 to 10 and cut 27%, or $200 million per year, of provincial funding for Public Health. Although he backtracked on some of these plans, cuts continued and the restructuring is not off the table.
• Ford planned to cut & restructure paramedic ambulance dispatch services, down from 59 to 10.  Delayed by the pandemic, these plans are not off the table. 
• Instead of giving resources to Public Health Units and public labs to ramp up COVID testing in the pandemic, the Ford Government has awarded contracts to private labs & for-profit pharmacy chains.
• On December 31, the Ford government strictly cut access to public COVID-19 testing while allowing forprofit companies to administer COVID-19 tests for exorbitant prices ($95 - $200+). 
• Ford privatized vaccinations, awarding contracts to Shoppers Drug Mart, Rexall & FH Health.