Our Universal Health Care System in Ontario and Canada is on its Death Bed

Family Doctors and Others in the Health Care System are Extra Billing Patients Up To Hundreds of Dollars Per Visit and Our Provincial and Federal Governments Are So Far Doing Nothing About It

A Brief Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter and publisher Doug Draper

Posted February 8^th, 2023 on Niagara At Large

Canadians used to speak proudly to our American friends and neighbours about having one of the best health-care systems in the world, fully available to everyone at zero cost above what we all pay in taxes.

But not anymore.

Thanks to at least more than two and a half decades of successive federal and provincial governments slashing taxes in favour of the most powerful and privileged among us, and cutting funding to services, including our health care, at the same time, our once-proud universal health care system is circling the drain.

The federal Liberal Trudeau government has made a big deal this week out of its agreement with Canada’s provinces and territories to shovel tens-of-billions of extra dollars into health care.

But this same Trudeau government,based on what we can surmise from what has been reported in the media, has said nothing about attaching that funding to public health care bodies only and to doctors and other health care workers who do not bill patients above and beyond what the public system covers or pays for.

In other words, the multi-billion-dollar Trudeau money dump does little or nothing to ensure our universal health care system will survive. To put it bluntly, it is bullshit.

If you did not manage to tune in to the CBC Radio Ontario Today, noon-hour phone in program broadcast out of Toronto, Ontario, the following link should allow you to listen to the program now, noting that once you get in, under Episodes, click on the February 8^th show – Ontario Today | Live Radio | CBC Listen

A Brief Footnote from Doug Draper at Niagara At Large – From what I can see, about the only political leader who is so far making it clear that any federal Trudeau government funding that goes into health care should go to public programs, rather than for-profit rackets, is Ontario’s new NDP Leader Marit Stiles.

Here is one of her most recent news releases on this –

NDP: Federal health funding must go into public system

QUEEN’S PARK — Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles issued the following statement in response to the Prime Minister’s meeting with Premiers on health care transfers:

“Ontarians cherish our health care system – health care that is publicly funded and publicly delivered.

Our province needs more federal funding to help fix our health care crisis, but that funding must go into our public system – into recruiting and retaining our health care workers with fair and respectful wages.

We need bold, innovative changes to address our staffing crisis and surgery backlog within the public system, not outside of it.

Doug Ford has been deliberately starving public health care for years. He’s been suppressing health care workers’ wages and sitting on billions of dollars in unspent health care funding.

The NDP will continue to stand up against the Ford government’s plan to pour money into private, for-profit health clinics—a move that will further drive workers out of hospitals and create a system where those who can afford to pay will get better, faster care. Everyone else will be left waiting.”

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