Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he strongly believes in public health care, but his government will “get creative” when looking at how it can be delivered as the province deals with a hospital staffing crisis.
Ford said Friday that “everything is on the table” when asked if Ontario is considering further privatization of the health care system.
“I’m not going to do anything without consulting the experts there,” he said at an appearance in Dundalk, Ontario. “There’s one thing we guarantee: You’ll always be covered by OHIP, not the credit card.”
Asked if patients would have to pay anything if they had surgery at a private clinic, Ford said it would be “100 percent” covered.
“We will never deviate from that,” he said.
“Are we going to be creative? Absolutely. As I mentioned, we simply cannot as a province continue to do the same thing and expect a different result.”
Earlier this week, Health Secretary Sylvia Jones said the government was looking at all options to improve the health system, sparking fears of further privatisation. She later said that what is not being addressed is asking people to pay out of pocket for services currently covered by OHIP.
Emergency rooms across the province have been closed for hours or days this summer due to a severe nursing shortage. This has affected smaller rural hospitals more than larger urban ones.
Ford said his government was talking to health experts across the sector to try to figure out how to solve the staffing problem. But he and Jones did not specify what options they were considering.
“If there is a way to provide better publicly funded health care, we will do it,” he said.
The prime minister pointed to a private hernia surgery clinic set up when the health system went public as a good example of how the private sector can help.
NDP health critic Frans Gelinas criticized the idea of further privatization.
“They will throw staff out of our public hospitals and urgent care centers, making the health care crisis that much worse,” she said in a written statement.
“If private surgery clinics accept your OHIP card for your procedure, they bill you for your room, the pain meds you take, your food, the physical therapy you need, and more.”
Some health care is provided by private companies, including many long-term care homes and nursing agencies. Hospitals are increasingly using nursing agencies during the staffing crisis, health officials say.
But those nurses come at a high price, said Dr. Michael Warner, an intensive care physician at Michael Garron Hospital in Toronto.
“Why does my hospital, for example, have at least three private agencies that provide nurses every day to our hospital at a premium that costs the hospital more than they’re going to have to pay our nurses?” Warner said.
“Sometimes it costs them double or triple what they pay these private companies.”
Warner said some agencies charge $110 an hour plus HST for a nurse.
Catherine Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses Association, a union that represents more than 60,000 nurses and health care workers, said some agencies are now charging hospitals more than $200 an hour, almost four times what they used to charge before the pandemic.
Ford said there wasn’t much he could do about the situation.
“I can’t control the private sector per se,” he said when asked if it was price gouging.
Ford’s press conference on Friday was briefly interrupted when he swallowed an insect while answering questions from reporters.
“God, I just swallowed a bee,” he said after coughing. “I am fine. He’s down here buzzing around right now. He has a lot of real estate!”
With files from Alison Jones and Nushin Ziafati.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on August 12, 2022.
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