Privatization Fact Sheet

The Harris government has been busy crafting a two-tier health care system. They've done this by deliberately starving our public system and by imposing new rules in every sector, including hospitals, long-term care facilities and home care, and weighted them in favour of the private, for-profit sector.

This huge shift is having an enormous impact on all of us. For starters, citizens are already spending more money out of our own pockets than ever before for services that were once covered in the public system.  At the same time, government restructuring has thrown open the doors to the for-profit health care industry.  Increasingly, services that were once provided in the public sector and by the not-for-profits are now being delivered by big business.

Some of the radical changes include: user fees for prescription drugs for seniors and social assistance recipients; de-listing or tightening of many OHIP procedures such as eye exams and pap smears; restrictions to home oxygen programs, forcing many patients to pick up the tab; cuts to hospitals forcing patients to home care where services are being rationed.  Patients now have to pay for services if they can't get by on the minimal hours available.  As physiotherapy is dumped out of hospitals, we are forced to pay private, for-profit clinics; the elimination of minimal requirements in long term care facilities is forcing families to hire private agency nurses to care for their loved ones, and on, and on, and...

PRIVATIZATION FACTS Health care funding cut by almost $200 per person since the Tories took power   Hospital cuts and closures forcing people to home care where costs are not covered under the Canada Health Act   Cuts to hospital services and staff forcing many hospital patients to pay for what's gone missing   Scandalous underfunding of home care and rule changes mean more costs for patients and a bonanza for for-profit providers   Cuts to standards in Long Term Care facilities forcing many residents to supplement missing care   OHIP services de-listed, user fees for drugs for seniors and social assistance recipients, increases I chronic care bed fees   Everywhere, patients paying for missing care while corporate profits soar

Produced May 1999 Click here to return to the OHC Home Page.