LTE: Urgent Call to Prioritize Public Healthcare Funding

Mr Ford will you and your Conservative party please start putting health care  money where it’s supposed to be?  We, as tax payers, expect our taxes and contributions to be spent in our Public Hospitals not in For Profit ones.                      

Enough is enough!                                

Go back to funding our hospitals and paying fair wages to the medical staff, that you so lavishly lauded during the pandemic; the physicians, nurses and support staff who want to help all Ontarians, regardless of what they are worth or can afford… 

After reading about private services in clinics and hospitals  and hearing voices of other provinces, I believe the private sector’s priority will be given to quick fixes. I believe for profit clinics will not be for those with long term and lifetime disabilities, such as diabetes, cancer, C.F… chronic diseases, M.S., preferring instead to service quick fixes like eye cataracts, knee and hip replacements, MRI’s, anything that are one shot deals all while charging 3 to 10 times more than what OHIP and public hospitals can charge while using the space available in our underfunded public hospitals and clinics, which is violating the Canada Health Act that says: no patient can be charged for medically needed hospital and physician care. Health care is to be provided based on need – no matter where you live and no matter how rich or poor you are.

This is what Canadians won when we achieved Public Medicare. And violating the 1973 creation of OHIP that came with the assurance that hospitals in Ontario would never be privatised. 

Sincerely,

Adele Constantineau
Cornwall

P.S… I am a senior, two time survivor of breast cancer on a gov’t pension as are many of my friends and on a government handout of less than $4000. a month for two to live on, there is no way that any of us will be able to afford the prices that will be charged for private health care, that has already started to be implemented  in Ontario thanks to an unsympathetic Conservative gov’t who is favouring those who can already afford these services.