A ’High Alert’ Message from the Ontario Health Coalition, a province-wide citizens’ advocate for quality public health care
Posted August 14th, 2022 on Niagara At Large
The Ontario Health Coalition is at its highest level of alert as a result of the Ford government’s statements about their plans to privatize public health care services this week, warning that the government’s statements reveal they are having backroom discussions regarding health care privatization, including specifically privatization of Ontario’s public hospital services.
Ontario Health Coalition director Natalie Mehra
Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, called the Ford government’s statements, “both outrageous and foolhardy”.
She demanded full disclosure of the corporations with which the Ford government has been meeting regarding plans to privatize health care, and she called on Ford to reveal a complete list of health care services under threat of privatization.
She warned that the Ford government has no mandate for hospital privatization whatsoever, particularly given their outright denials of these plans in response to the Coalition’s warnings in the pre-election period.
“The Ford government stated “options” are actively “under consideration”, indicating that there have been backroom discussions regarding restructuring and privatizing Ontario’s public and non-profit health care services. This is unacceptable. Without exaggeration, these are life and death issues for every single Ontarian,” noted Ms. Mehra.
*The Coalition is inviting media to a press conference Monday, August 15 at 10:30 a.m. by Zoom.*
*All Health Coalition members and supporters are invited to join the Facebook livestream at 10:30 a.m. Monday morning (Aug. 15) on the Ontario Health Coalition Facebook page at: *https://www.facebook.com/ontariohealth
*The Ontario Health Coalition represents more than 750,000 Ontarians in its network of approx. 500 member organizations, 40 local chapters, and individuals. Its members include seniors’ organizations, patients and patient advocates, health professionals, nurses, support staff, PSWs and their unions, physicians, non-profit organizations, community groups, student organizations, and cultural organizations, among others.
The Coalition has, for 50 years, worked to build and safeguard single-tier public medicare, amend legislation in the public interest, stop cuts and privatization, improve quality and expand capacity in public health care.
*We are proud of the difference we make and we hope you are too. This work is only made possible by people who care like you. Please do become a member or donate. It matters!
If you can, please CLICK HERE <http://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/donate-now/> to donate or become a member.
About the Ontario Health Coalition – The Ontario Health Coalition is comprised of a Board of Directors, committees of the Board as approved in the Coalition’s annual Action Plan, Local Coalitions, member organizations and individual members. Currently the Ontario Health Coalition represents more than 400 member organizations and a network of Local Health Coalitions and individual members. Our members include: seniors’ groups; patients’ organizations; unions; nurses and health professionals’ organizations; physicians and physician organizations that support the public health system; non-profit community agencies; student groups; ethnic and cultural organizations; residents’ and family councils; retirees; poverty and equality-seeking groups; women’s organizations, and others.
For more information on the Ontario Health Coalition and its advocacy work, click on – www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca
NIAGARA AT LARGE Encourages You To Join The Conversation By Sharing Your Views On This Post In The Space Following The Bernie Sanders Quote Below.
Niagara At Large 
Be afraid, be very afraid. How do you destroy something good? Don’t feed it, don’t give it what it needs and it will die. Ontario’s nurse/patient ratio is likely still the lowest in the country. One of the wealthiest provinces!
Refuse decent wage increases commensurate with the qualifications, education and the responsibilities that the professionals bear every day (even in crisis situations like we’ve recently experienced for over three years), replace them with lesser qualified people, fast track foreign educated people (who may in fact be very well trained but fast tracking their credentials is not necessarily ideal and why has it taken so long to initiate?), cut back on the numbers of staff, retain more pencil pushers who find irrational ways to cost cuts.
I was in the ER last week with severe pain from a kidney stone and the normal staff of 10 was reduced to only 7. Halls were full of patients on stretchers. No privacy. Emergency equipment nearby but not that readily at hand. Fire code violations. Finally I was put in a chair in a tiny eye exam room with two others while receiving strong IV pain medication that can cause sleepiness and dizziness. Certainly far from ideal but not the fault of the staff and I was grateful for the relief of the pain. I understood why, but others might be furious and think privatization is the cure…until they have to pay for it.
ignore pleas from the people on the front lines, people who KNOW. As a result some people will even agree that public health care needs to go not knowing its ruination has been intentional and long planned. People will be SO surprised. We’ve been fighting this for years and they have slowly and methodically been plotting this. No different that the Republicans in the US with their decades long plans to change basic rights that the people want and need and thought was enshrined. Damn anyone who voted for this creep. Don’t forget the largest % of COVID deaths in nursing homes were in PRIVATE, FOR PROFIT homes.
That being said, a thank you and praise for the staff who took care of me and so many others last week and have managed to stick to their profession in spite of the chaos. They deserve better and deserve our respect.
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BTW – it isn’t a recent Ford campaign to Privatize, it’s been deliberately “slow-burn” active conspiracy by American companies since the days of Mike Harris in the early 1990s and the signing of FTA and NAFTA 1.0, recently ramped up full speed since the ratification of NAFTA 2.0, not just from the ‘outside’ but ‘inside’ every aspect of our Health Care system, that they came to own control and run everything, destroying it to finally come to this current time using the COVID Pandemic to being able to claim the only solution left to fix the broken system is Privatization. Once done, the Americanization of Ontario Health Care can’t be reversed without devastating catastrophic results far worse than Americanization, the other English Provinces quickly capitulating, and thus eliminating the last vestige of Canada being a separate country, ripe for complete annexation into “Fortress America”.
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