By Doug Draper
While media in Niagara, Ontario focused late this March on the lack of parking needed for those visiting the just-opened hospital complex in west St. Catharines, there is also the question of whether visitors to a hospital should have to pay a fee for parking.
That question will be explored this Friday, March 29 on CBC TV’s public affairs program Marketplace, scheduled to air at 8 p.m. on CBC’s Cable 6 channel – a program which asks if charging fees for parking at a hospital is not just one more “tax on the sick.”
It is a question well worth asking at a time when the Niagara Health System – operator of most of the hospital services in Niagara, Ontario – recently raised parking rates for both visitors and staff, to $2 per half hour, $4 an hour and up to a maximum of $8 a day to help beat back a multi-million-dollar annual operating deficit.
Yet in fairness to the NHS, it is far from the only hospital system in Ontario and across the country charging more than many municipalities do per hour to park your car along a downtown street. According to the Marketplace report, hospitals across the province and country resort to parking and other user fees because they are not getting enough funding from federal and provincial governments to cover their operating costs, and perhaps we all have to ask ourselves why that is the case.
It isn’t nice to find yourself in a position where you are one of the people feeding loonies and toonies into a meter at a hospital parking lot because you have to be there to visit a sick relative or friend. But you and any of the rest of us who have or may one day find ourselves in that position may also want to ask ourselves this.
Are we among the many residents across this region and the rest of the country who applaud governments for cutting taxes and who threaten to throw them out of office is they dare to suggest raising them. If so, then we also have to face the possibility that after everything has been done to cut “wasteful costs” – a category of costs that depends on whether you are or are not you are a beneficiary of services others may feel are wasteful – then about the only options bodies dependent on public funding have are to cut services or charge those in need of the services user fees.
So there we are. If you are someone fortunate enough to not have anything to do with a hospital, you may benefit from the tax cuts that come, in part, from federal and provincial governments either freezing or reducing the amount of funding they distribute to hospital systems. If you need to go to a hospital, those tax cuts come back to haunt you in the form of higher user fees.
The same scenario hold for many other public bodies that feel they have little or no choice to hike user fees at a time when governments are either cutting or holding the line on taxes and therefore have less funding to give them.
Ultimately, it is up to we the people to decide what kind of society we want to live in. Do we want to live in one where we take whatever tax cut we can get, regardless of the consequences, and let the user of whatever service it is pay, or contribute to a pool of funds for services one or another member of our community needs?
It is a debate we need to have more thoroughly in our communities before we see public services erode to a point where they no longer have the capacity to effectively meet our collective needs.
For more information on the hospital parking rate topic and the CBC Marketplace piece click on http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/03/28/marketplace-hospital-parking.html .or the Marketplace home page at http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2013/03/map-rising-costs-of-hospital-parking.html . You can also check the Marketplace site or do a little Googling to search for dates and times for repeat broadcasts of this story.
(Niagara At Large invites you to join in the conservation by sharing your views on the content of this post below. For reasons of transparency and promoting civil dialogue, NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last name with their views.)
Niagara At Large 
Generally speaking, I am opposed to charging people to park to visit their loved ones in a hospital, as it discourages visitation, which is so important to the patient….but I supposed you could look at a reduced rate for people that vist frequently over a long period of time.
Beyond that there should be compensation to the people in the southern tier that have lost reasonable access to essential hospital services. People in the southern tier should receive either free parking or free transportation to the new hospital to make up for the fact their hospitals have been severely dismantled and for the extra costs and time incurred due to transportation.
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Then, perhaps the hospital should cover my taxi fares for free because those who drive do not pay as much as I do to get there, even if the driver theoretically drives in from Fort Erie. Bus service to the new hospital even for people that live in St. Catharines is still not that great, even in the daytime. If parking becomes free for those that have cars and park them, then SOMEBODY ends up paying for their parking … including other users that don’t drive. But if there are parking charges, they should only cover the costs of maintaining it, and not use it to create a profit source for the hospital or any business working with it.
As to the comment above, I agree that better transportation options are needed for those in south Niagara. Not everybody in south Niagara drives either and the cost for taxis to get to the new hospital from south Niagara is prohibitive. IMNSHO, get a new hospital for those in the south Niagara as well. Niagara region as a whole gets less per capita spending on health care than the rest of the cities in Ontario. Those that make these dumb decisions about where to locate hospitals don’t seem to understand one cannot get around Niagara very readily unless they own a vehicle and can drive it. Even among many that do, some may not be able to drive it if they are sick or are undergoing tests at the new facility that may lead to problems with driving oneself there or back. But unfortunately, I bet the person that made this dumb decision is listed somewhere on the Sunshine List and no doubt, has four vehicles in their driveway.
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Also, given the nature of the charges, if they are to be reduced or removed, how else will the hospital pay for their debts? I can bet you people who are sick might have to pay a surcharge to go there and perhaps, get one of the private rooms. That should not be permitted either especially if most of the rooms are private rooms and the person involved is immune compromised and would require one in any case.
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In the past, when the local medical complexes used lift gates, anyone actually using medical services was able to get free exit tokens.
When they adopted the business model of pay-first from the cities and the university in Niagara, it became a crime and tax against the sick.
Parking tickets are illegal and should be considered usury. If you pay five dollars but miss a three dollar additional payment you are charged? Over $50 for parking later than you thought. That is a 1000% markup that doesn’t actually solve the immediate problem of over-crowded parking.
Towing solves overcrowded parking. Towing is not usury – it is the law in action. Towing wouldn’t happen to a poor family because there would be an immediate and visible protest. Towing would happen in a peaceful way to the non-hospital local employees that park their sportscars in the parking spots needed for hospital guests.
Let’s get rid of the parking warden and bring back the tow trucks so that parking is a privilege of customers and guests rather than a separate service. Also – when did the City of Welland get the right to make it a city by-law offence to park on private property? This issue goes far beyond the hospital in Niagara.
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Sorry about the horrible grammar in my previous post. Parking fees are another item on the long list of things that make me indignant beyond words.
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Stick a new hospital out in the middle of nowhere, move services from other hospitals throughout the region, so that some people have to travel 45 minutes or more to get there. No public transportation worth referring to as “access to the hospital” is available. It is a captive audience that comes there, so why not soak them for every cent possible to park. At least the old site had parking options at city meters and better bussing options. This location is so totally stupid, but then who ever blamed the government for being smart? I hope I never have to use it, or visit anyone there.
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It doesn’t just affect people visiting loved ones… it also affects people who regularly attend outpatient services. $8 every time you attend a weekly session adds up quickly, especially when because of your illness you’re likely on a low income or disability. A couple possible compromises are to issue patients parking passes for the duration of their treatment, validate parking for patients, or to eliminate parking enforcement to cut costs and make paying for parking a “pay if you can” option.
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The rules are already far too complicated. Even if the exception were made only for people on welfare (WSIB Disability, CPP Pension, Regional Social Assistance, EI Payouts, or any other welfare) the methods of authentication are too strict and do not account for the working poor.
This funding issue shouldn’t exist in the first place. Every public sector entity seems to be hopping aboard the pay-parking system under the excuses of raising money for their public mission, or cutting the costs of operating a parking lot, although the best excuse has been to ensure that visitors don’t use their large parking lot to visit other smaller local businesses.
In Welland the hospital parking lot is frequently used as overflow at the arena. The arena parking lot used to be used as free parking for the hospital.
I want to believe that I pay for my parking at public facilities when I pay taxes. I understand the need for PAVED PARKING (please excuse the cheap highlight), although outside of the handicapped spots it is an unnecessary cost. I would park in a grassy field in the fall to avoid this double-dip. Grassy fields don’t need to be salted, repaved, or cleared of snow down to the millimeter.
Hospitals – Don’t use funding / maintenance / overcrowding as an excuse to punish middle class families in a region that lacks a public transit fee exemption for welfare recipients or those working below the poverty line.
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Sadly, there are those who are pushed over the edge financially with the parking fees. Small to big-salaried execs of our hospital system perhaps but not to many families. Our family went through two insurance policies that covered extra expenses for health care, a good many of those expenses were for parking fees at various hospitals. When someone is in hospital for up to three months — as once happened to us — $20 per day for parking is a heavy hit!
Sick Kids — God bless them for their great work to be sure — made over $5,000,000 last year, according to one media outlet, just from parking fees. Now the government wants to add taxes onto the fees. Is there no end to the grasping nature of this Liberal government?
Clearly someone missed the boat when the new St. Catharines hospital was designed. Did its visionaries not think people would drive there?? We have people at our church who cannot afford the parking fees and when you factor in their great difficulty getting there in the first place to visit a family member who, for example, has their baby at the hospital, you see how truly short sited the leadership of our fair province is. A trip from Fort Erie is already close to 45 minutes to the hospital — a fair expense counting gas for both directions — then add the parking on top of that! This truly is a tax on the sick.
Actually, that’s sick!
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I can understand some kind of fee in big cities where facilities have had to build and maintain parking ramps due to shortage of space but that is not a problem in our region. Once such an edifice is paid for the charge should be minimal, just enough for maintenance, not some outrageous fee.
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I support a user pay model, but only for the cost of maintaining the lot, not for a profit. Aren’t hospitals not for profit entities? I don’t believe I should have to pay through my taxes for other people to park at the hospital for free when nobody pays as part of their taxes, my taxi fares to and from the hospital, given the stupid and poorly serviced location they have. If parking fees are in place, only charge what it costs, and nothing more … and staff of the hospitals should also have to cover their own parking costs. The amounts quoted are far too high to cover the costs. And beef up public transit service to the location as well, not only within the city, but from points from Niagara South as well.
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