Two health care advocate organizations are pushing back against health care emergencies by way of a giant Trojan Horse.
Residents of the Rainy River District who may have seen the towering horse traversing the region this week will be relieved to know their eyes aren’t playing tricks on them. Rather, the wooden horse was being paraded through the area by way of the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) and the CUPE Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OHCU-CUPE), who joined forces earlier this month to embark on a cross-province Trojan Horse Ontario Tour to bring awareness and action to what they are calling the Ford government’s privatization of health care.
The group stopped in the western parts of the district on Monday, October 21, 2024, beginning at the Rainy River Health Centre at 9:00 a.m. before making their way to the Emo Health Centre for 11:30 a.m. Both stops included the giant horse on a flatbed trailer, where it was draped with a banner calling on the government to stop the privatization of health care in Ontario. The stops also featured brief speeches by a number of invested parties representing the OHC and others who say they are playing witness to the changes to Ontario’s health care system.
The first to speak at the Emo Health Centre stop was vice-president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions Kevin Cook, who explained that the decision to use a trojan horse as the symbol for the tour came from the iconic mythological story wherein ancient Greek warriors presented a large wooden horse as a gift to the Trojans, but secretly hid inside the structure and waited until the fall of night to launch an ambush on the unsuspecting Trojans, thus bringing about the destruction of the city and the end of the Trojan War. The two health advocate organizations claim that the Ford government is presenting privatization of health care as a similar gift, and masking its true impacts.
“They say privatization will reduce wait times,” Cook said.
“They will alleviate the crisis and staffing in our hospitals, that they will provide the care that the people of Ontario need. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Their plan is deceptive and is dangerous for our public hospitals.”
Cook said that despite governmental assurances to the contrary, private clinics and surgical centres have been found by the OHC to be billing some patients extra for OHIP covered services, as well as what he called “unnecessary add-on services” along with consulting, administrative, membership and appointment fees.
“There has been cases of patients being charged up to $8,000 at these private for-profit clinics,” Cook said.
“$8,000 for services that would have been offered at free of cost in the public hospitals. Who can afford to pay for these services? How many ordinary people can afford that care? How many health care workers have $8,000 just lying around to pay for cataract surgeries? How many seniors on pensions can afford it?”
Cook pointed to a study released by the Canadian Medical Association Journal in August that he said found an increase in the rates of surgeries in private clinics of 24 percent “for the wealthiest people in Ontario” while at the same time the rates declined by 9 percent “for the people with the lowest incomes.” Cook said the Trojan Horse Tour was to spread awareness of these inequities and push for the government to revise its policies to put more money back into “the public hospitals that need it.”
“We are here to say, why would you pay more than twice as much for surgeries in a private clinic than we can do in a public hospital?” Cook told the crowd assembled on the Emo Health centre lawn.
“Why would we encourage privatization of surgeries when the Canadian Medical Association Journal has found the wealthy Ontarians have more access to private cataract surgeries, while waits for middle class have lengthened? Why would we let the private clinics pay 50 percent more to steal the public staff from the hospitals that will worsen the crisis in these hospitals? Why would we let the public be exposed to paying all sorts of extra charges and hundreds and thousands of dollars for services that are free in the public hospitals?” This policy is more expensive, wasteful, lengthens wait times and gouges the public… it’s people over profits, that’s what comes first.”
Local CUPE 4807 president Malcolm Daley, himself a professional paramedic, was also invited to speak at both stops in the tours schedule in the Rainy River District. Daley took the time to acknowledge the struggles facing not just hospitals in the district, but also paramedics as they face significant staffing shortages, expressing a feeling of anger at witnessing the quality of health care drop over the years he has lived in the area.
“I’ve lived in this community my whole life, and I’ve seen nothing but a decline in the services offered to me, offered to you, to my family, relatives, my patients,” Daley said.
“How outrageous is this system, that we not only have funds allocated to health care, public funds that are being underspent year after year, but that now we’re seeing an ever increase in transitioning those funds to private for-profit health care services? We’re here talking about human rights. We’re talking about health care access. We already have such limited access, and we’re just seeing a continued shifting of that access away from us. So you guys being here is such an important statement, because that’s how change gets made.”
Judy Bain is the vice-president for the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions for Area 7, Western Ontario, and told those assembled Monday morning that a move towards more for-profit healthcare is costing taxpayers more through increased fees charged to OHIP by for-profit actors than would be charged at public hospitals. Bain alleged that at Don Mill Surgical Centre, the government pays $1,264 per eye for cataract surgery, a procedure she said would only cost $508 per eye in the public hospital system. She also said a CBC investigation found a for-profit hospital received $4,200 for knee surgeries, which is more than double the cost of a public procedure at $1,700. She also challenged the provincial government’s claim that private clinics are helping to alleviate the wait times by addressing the province’s surgical backlog.
“That’s not true either,” she said.
“Private clinics don’t magically create additional capacity. They’re not add ons. They’re takeaways. They poach the staff from the public system. After all, there’s only one workforce, and we’re that workforce. Just by opening a private clinic, you don’t magically create nurses, PSWs, paramedics, housekeeping and clerical. What happens is you worsen the staffing levels in the public hospitals. This is already happening in our area. We see staffing shortages for the more acute as the government funding goes up for the for profit clinics.”
Bain said they want to see the government invest money to create 16,000 more hospital beds in the province, along with funding to hire thousands more staff to fill existing vacancies in public hospitals, which she said will clear the waitlist for surgeries and “end hallway medicine.”
In the efforts to force the government to allocate appropriate funding to public health care and away from private for-profit centres, Bain said the OHC and OHCU-CUPE have made progress in the past through their campaigning and the support of the public, and that in order to continue to make a difference, they rely on the continued support of those in the province who value a strong public health care system.
“We must continue to speak out,” Bain said.
“If we continue to apply the pressure we can win these battles, and we must win these battles because we fought long and hard for our public health care system. We must do everything possible to preserve it. You can do your part by showing up, which you did and I thank you, by speaking out and having your voices heard.”
Following the two stops in the district on Monday, the Trojan Horse Ontario Tour was scheduled to head to Kenora. The tour began on October 4, 2024, with a demonstration at Queen’s Park in Toronto, and will continue to traverse the province throughout November, concluding with a stop at Brampton City Hall on November 30, 2024.
