LETTER: High price to pay to shorten surgery waitlist

SooToday received the following letter to the editor from Marie DellaVedova of the SSM-Algoma Health Coalition in response to Ontario's passage of Bill 60.

“You’ll just pay with your OHIP card.” So we are told. Sounds innocuous.

But patients of private clinics often tell worrisome stories.

There are stories of being upsold services and products that can amount to thousands of extra dollars on top of OHIP.

Stories of extra-billing that, while illegal under the Canada Health Act, often goes unchecked.

Patients are usually unaware of what is allowed and what is not, of what is necessary for their treatment and what is superfluous.

Vulnerable people are understandably susceptible to unnecessary costs and procedures promoted by doctors in private, for-profit clinics - those doctors often driven by self-interest to bend or break the rules.

How many of us wouldn’t do as much as we can, pay as much as we can, if we mistakenly believe that will give us or our loved ones a better health outcome?

Patients often do not complain because they are not aware that extra charges are not allowed or because they are unaware of where or how to complain.

With the Passage of Bill 60 and the expansion of more surgical procedures into a growing number of private clinics, public hospitals will continue to lose nurses, doctors and other health-care workers at an accelerated rate to higher paying for-profit providers.

The government says it wants to rebuild surgical capacity. But there are operating rooms in public hospitals that are closed and underused because of lack of funding and staff.

Last year the Ontario government chose to underspend its own budget on health care by $1.25 billion.

It could have chosen to fund and open under-used operating rooms already in our public hospitals. Instead, provincial funding for public hospitals is being cut, and millions of our public dollars are going to fund private hospitals.

For-profit privatization increases the likelihood of a ravaged public health-care system struggling to meet the needs of patients, especially the riskier patients with complicated health conditions that are usually turned away from for-profit clinics.

For-profit clinics tend to be located in larger, more lucrative locations. Northern and rural communities such as ours, could be left with only underfunded and understaffed public hospitals.

Australia and the United Kingdom both introduced privatized health care to an already existing public health care system. Mixed public–private funding and provision has had a damaging effect on their public health care systems.

It has not led to improved health outcomes or improved access to public care, nor has it reduced wait times.

According to Stephen Duckett, PhD, DSc., “It does, however, allow higher incomes for doctors and provides business opportunities for investors in private hospitals.”

As well, data from B.C. and from other countries suggests private, for-profit surgery clinics will likely increase the cost to taxpayers and could worsen wait times in Ontario hospitals.

Just pay with our OHIP card? We will likely be paying with a whole lot more.

Many health-care activists believe that the privatization of hospital procedures and services will eventually result in the destruction of our public hospital system and the loss of universal access to hospital care.

That is quite a price to pay.

Participate in the province-wide referendum. www.publichospitalvote.ca

Marie DellaVedova, SSM-Algoma Health Coalition