The Ford government’s looming health-care system “transformation” is being rushed through with little explanation to limit scrutiny by the public, the Ontario Health Coalition charges.
Citing confidential draft legislation and other documents leaked to the New Democrats indicating elements of the plan — including the creation of a new “super agency” to run the medical system — have already been approved by Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet, the lobby group is warning of “chaos” for patients.
“Nobody in Ontario voted for this,” said Nathalie Mehra, executive director of the left-leaning organization that opposes privatization and for-profit, health-care providers.
The draft bill, which Progressive Conservative Health Minister Christine Elliott has downplayed as a “very early” version, would give the new super agency unprecedented powers to contract out health services, potentially creating an “ad hoc patchwork” of medical care across the province, Mehra maintained.
With a number of cabinet approvals already in place and documents showing the full legislation will be tabled late this month and passed by summer, the process is well underway, she added.
“This is clearly an intent to push this thing through as fast as possible before the public ever catches up with what the real agenda is here with the government and before anyone can mount any kind of significant opposition.”
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Elliott has flatly denied the government is planning increased privatization or two-tier medical services, in which people who can afford it could get faster or premium care.
“What people receive now is through OHIP and that will continue,” she said two weeks ago when New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath first sounded the alarm over draft legislation called the Health System Efficiency Act, 2019.
An unnamed bureaucrat has since been fired by Ontario’s top civil servant over the leaked bill for breaking a confidentiality oath. The Ontario Provincial Police anti-rackets squad is reviewing the case to determine if a full investigation is warranted.
Elliott has refused to detail the reforms, but acknowledged “transformative change” is coming to address problems, including the roughly 1,000 patients being treated daily in hospital hallways because of a lack of beds and a waiting list of 32,000 people for nursing homes.
“If these are the issues the Ford government is looking to fix, the public needs a step-by-step, dollar-by-dollar explanation of how a super agency will fix that,” said Dr. Ritika Goel, a family physician and board member of Canadian Doctors for Medicare.
“Without careful planning and consideration, hasty reorganizations can jeopardize the important front-line care being provided. And we can’t jeopardize peoples’ lives,” Goel said.
“The secrecy and lack of process and consultation surrounding this draft legislation leaves us unable to determine the intentions and goals behind this bill.”
Mehra said Elliott’s denials and the insistence nothing has been “finalized” ring hollow given the content of the bill and other leaked documents, which suggest the government will be issuing a call in March for “expressions of interest” in between 30 and 50 “MyCare” groups to provide integrated health care across the province.
“Those denials are absolutely, clearly very misleading to the public,” Mehra told a news conference Monday at Queen’s Park.
“The minister is choosing her public words extremely carefully but sidestepping the big picture, which is that absolutely, her government has been involved for months now in the creation of an omnibus health-care bill that would restructure the entire health-care system and turn over swaths of it to for-profit companies, potentially.”
The leaked documents made public by the NDP state that “the full health-care transformation plan” was approved at a Jan. 16 cabinet meeting.
One of the documents, titled “agency review weekly status report,” stated there will be an announcement later this month and indicates the government has used focus groups to gauge acceptance of the health-overhaul plan.
A schedule for moving forward with the transformation shows cabinet approvals of board members for the new health-care agency must be made by Feb. 20, when ministers will also revoke appointments to the boards of 20 existing health agencies being folded into the new body.
Rob Ferguson is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics.
https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/2019/02/11/ontarios-looming-health-care-reforms-are-being-rushed-through-to-limit-public-scrutiny-critics-say.html
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