Archive for the ‘Health Debates’ Category
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Doug Ford’s troubling push for more private health care
Thursday, March 31st, 2022
… Health Minister Christine Elliott said the Ford government was “opening up pediatric surgeries, cancer screenings, making sure that we can let independent health facilities operate private hospitals…” … For supporters of public health care, the June 2 Ontario election may be the most important in a generation. Indeed, Ford’s drive to further privatize health care while continuing to underfund the public system and underpay health-care workers should be the top campaign issue.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, privatization
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Long banned in Ontario, private hospitals could soon reappear
Thursday, March 10th, 2022
… with the chaos created by COVID as a cover, the Ford government seems poised to allow a considerable expansion of private health care in the province… a dramatic development, allowing hospitals — the centrepieces of our health-care system — to be governed by corporate boards that prioritize profits, as in the U.S… private hospitals would undermine medicare by enabling well-to-do patients to gain faster access to treatment.
Tags: budget, economy, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, privatization
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COVID-19 has highlighted — not caused — current health care problems in Canada
Tuesday, March 1st, 2022
… Canada is now 51st in the world in doctors per population. Our world ranking in the ’70s had varied between fourth and eighth… Despite our limiting the supply of care, total health spending in Canada was estimated by the Canadian Institute for Health Information to be $308 billion in 2021 ($8,019 per Canadian) representing 12.7 per cent of Canada’s GDP. This ranks among the highest in the world.
Tags: featured, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
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Public health care advocates support targeted federal spending boosts for provinces
Friday, February 4th, 2022
Public health advocates are calling for federal health care dollars for the provinces and territories to come with strings attached, countering the demands for more unconditional federal dollars from provincial and territorial leaders… “The simple reality is, handing out blank cheques to Conservative premiers won’t fix nursing shortages, repair long-term care, provide better mental health services or implement pharmacare”
Tags: budget, featured, Health, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical
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‘Alternative budget’ tackles social and ecological determinants of health
Thursday, February 3rd, 2022
the AFB lays out a plan to ensure health equity and well-being for all by, among other things: Connecting the dots between the social and ecological determinants of health—things like income, working conditions, a clean environment—and their impact on health outcomes… Expanding the public health care system to include pharmacare, a national mental health program, a national dental care plan, and 10 paid sick days. Developing national standards for virtual care…
Tags: budget, Health, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical, standard of living
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What do we want our health-care system to do, and how much are we willing to pay?
Wednesday, January 12th, 2022
In late 2019, the Ontario Hospital Association published a report touting the sector’s history of efficiency while warning that the efficiencies had come at a cost. It noted that, if Ontario funded its hospital system just to the level of the Canadian average, that would cost another $4 billion annually. But almost all Canadian provinces have relatively few beds per capita compared with other wealthy countries…
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical, privatization
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Answers from COVID experts…
Monday, December 20th, 2021
… trust is really the major factor… the social media discourse has a huge role to play in the way that trust has eroded as a society… there are reasonable concerns about the government imposing mandatory measures, but there are choices to be made about the collective health of the population.
Tags: Health, pharmaceutical
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It’s time for this generation’s political leaders to tackle the hard issues in Canadian health care
Wednesday, December 15th, 2021
Provincial health-care systems differ widely over titles, practices, pay and performance metrics. Their contribution to wider sharing of best practices could be agreeing to some shared definitions, targets and an agency to measure performance… as the pandemic revealed, provinces in a health-care crisis must support each other.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health
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Our nursing crisis is a public crisis
Wednesday, October 13th, 2021
It is not a mystery why nurses are leaving. They are overworked, face brutal working conditions, and a decade of wage suppression has been locked in even further by Bill H-124… The Ontario government’s solution to the nursing shortage is to train more nurses rather than stemming the tide of experienced nurses leaving… Just like physicians, there are areas of specialization within nursing that involve years of extra training… We call on the Ontario government to invest in nursing, stop calling nurses heroes and start treating them like human beings.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living, women
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Once COVID is finally tamed, Canada will have to tackle the ‘other pandemic’
Monday, September 13th, 2021
Neither major party is prepared to go where an increasing number of medical and legal experts — from public health officers to those chiefs of police — say they should: taking possession of drugs for personal use out of the Criminal Code entirely. And neither party is particularly eager to talk about the opioid crisis during the election campaign… It should be getting more attention from both politicians and voters.
Tags: crime prevention, economy, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical
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