It is hard to keep ideology out of public services, especially when that ideology leans toward fewer public services and a greater reliance on the private sector to provide those services. It is an oft-cited mantra of the right that the private sector is more efficient and provides better bang for the taxpayers’ buck.
Tories of various denominations across the country have taken on this mantra and amplified it at every sitting, even in the face of demonstrative evidence that simply isn’t so. Hardly a week goes by without some horror story from south of the border, where privatization of the medical system is considered sacrosanct. Privatization, it seems, is a holy grail chased by all knights of conservatism, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
This is somewhat odd, given that our national health system, for all its shortcomings, is among the most-often cited source of pride for Canadians coast to coast. You would think politics would dictate even the Tories falling in line to support the system. Not so, given Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s recent announcement that his government intends to move surgeries to private clinics, starting with knees, hips and cataracts.
This move will be government-funded, so is arguably not a full-on privatization. But it clearly signals a thin edge of the wedge and is a move that has the potential of causing even greater harm to a medical system that is already direly short on doctors and other health professionals.
There is no answer to how this move to private clinics will improve wait times for surgeries. What is far more likely is that clinics will now compete more strenuously for the health professionals that are out there, such as registered nurses and doctors, already in short supply.
The specious argument that this move will attract more doctors and nurses to the province flies in the face of the claim that private clinic doctors and nurses make less than their public sector counterparts.
The move has raised, in the words of Canadian Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos, “legitimate concerns” about the diversion of millions of taxpayer dollars into for-profit clinics eroding equitable access to public health services. In keeping with the oft-cited Trudeau-Ford bromance, the feds say they have no intention of micromanaging provincial health systems, which leads to the obvious question of “why not now?”
There are legitimate fears that this move will lead to the implementation of a two-tier system of health services in this province. We need only look to those jurisdictions where such systems have been implemented (see the United Kingdom’s National Health Service crisis for reference). The competition for valuable resources in the health sector has always come out snake-eyes for the public system and access for the less-than-well-heeled.
But before we take the Tories sole to task, it is important to recognize that the current crisis facing our health system did not come to pass overnight, it has been generations in the making. Literally, a pox on all their houses, as no Ontario political party has properly tackled the root cause when they had the opportunity.
The reasons behind our current doctor and nurse shortages have come about through successive governments’ underfunding of the system. Early days in the implementation of the public health system, governments came to the realization that every doctor that graduated immediately began billing the province for the full tick. The simple budgetary solution wasn’t that there were not enough doctors, so pony up more spaces, but rather to limit the number of medical school spaces to help keep costs down.
Now, bureaucratic logic says that the baby boom bulge is “artificially” ballooning costs and once those boomers are out of the picture, the need for doctors should subside and all will be well. Problem solved. Well, for the finance department at least. No political party has had the courage or political will to properly fix the issue at its source—not to be seen as soft on spending.
It would be remiss for The Expositor to not point out that the NDP government of British Columbia has taken a different route than the current Ontario Progressive Conservatives. Instead of moving more to private clinics, the BC NDP have chosen to invest more into their public health system. So perhaps the short-lived Rae government of decades past might have changed course had they not attempted to save jobs through their infamous Rae-Days plan and provided us instead with the subsequent Harris years of cuts for one and all.
The provincial Liberals under Dalton McGuinty chose more of a right-of-centre course, because, after all, now is a bad time. It’s always a bad time for public health spending, it seems.
The $500 million annual gift provided to private health clinics by the Ford government takes things to a whole new level, however. Instead of the benign neglect that bureaucrats have come to know and love, we now are seeing a privatization slight of hand end run around the public’s attachment to the national health care system.
Mr. Ford and his colleagues need to be watched and watched closely. There remains a long road to 2025 and it behooves us all to be wary of Tories bearing privatization gifts.
