Health « Social Policy in Ontario

Posts Tagged ‘Health’

Health care is the Ontario government’s job one. Shouldn’t they be better at it?

Thursday, December 7th, 2023

… this year’s reports on the health-care system are a reminder that spending less is not the same thing as spending well and that, in some cases at least, you need to spend more public money to fix important policy problems. Ontario may be training a record number of nurses, but if we want them to stay in this province, we’ll likely need to pay them more than we currently do — not least because Ontario currently pays nurses less than does any other province… for all the billions of dollars that the government taxes and spends to keep the system running

Tags: budget, Health, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »

Hospitals plagued by staff shortages and ER closures under Ford government, auditor general finds

Wednesday, December 6th, 2023

Plagued by shortages of doctors and nurses and persistent emergency room closures, Ontario lacks a province-wide strategy to fix the problems, the watchdog agency said in a wide-ranging audit of government performance… The worsening staff shortages have been fuelled by the Ford government’s Bill 124, which limited nurses and many other public sector workers to maximum annual pay hikes of one per cent, the auditor found.

Tags: budget, Health, ideology, jurisdiction
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »

Ford government’s bottomless determination to convert our drinking into private profit should concern us all

Wednesday, November 29th, 2023

… making alcohol cheaper and easier to purchase unsurprisingly leads to higher levels of drinking and increases in harm… Our drinking is big business — almost $10 billion a year — and multiple players are fighting to grab a larger slice of that pie. And while the industry winners may be about to waltz off with a record windfall, the likely losers — the Ontario taxpayers — may be left to deal with increasing social and health harms, all on a shrinking budget.

Tags: Health, ideology, jurisdiction, privatization
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »

We are walking down the dangerous path of health care privatization

Tuesday, November 21st, 2023

… medicare restrictions on physicians are provincially and territorially imposed, so many virtual clinics skirt the rules by employing physicians licenced in a different jurisdiction than the patient lives. Resolving these loopholes is not impossible — simply fold nurse practitioners into the same medicare legislation physicians work under and bring in nationwide physician licencing. Yet there seems to be no appetite on the part of health ministries to address these issues.

Tags: featured, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, privatization
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »

Canada needs doctors – so why is the country forcing Canadian physicians into exile?

Friday, November 17th, 2023

Both the licensing exams and residency matching are areas that if modified can establish a more streamlined, simple and fair repatriation process. Provincial governments can also work with medical schools to cover salaries for residency slots and the related program expansion costs for medical disciplines in shortest supply.

Tags: Health, ideology, jurisdiction
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »

Growing gas plants: a made-in-Ontario public health failure

Friday, November 17th, 2023

Air pollution prematurely kills at least 6,600 Ontarians annually… Breathing toxic polluted air, further worsened by gas expansion, causes disease throughout our bodies… Other jurisdictions worldwide are successfully combining energy conservation, storage, and safe large-scale renewable energy transitions using solar, wind and hydro. Overlooking these low-cost, ready and reliable solutions, the Ontario government deliberately cancelled pre-existing renewable projects, costing taxpayers approximately $231 million.

Tags: economy, Health, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »

National pharmacare dream dying as Trudeau appears ready to cave to Big Pharma

Thursday, November 16th, 2023

… pharmacare would increase Canadian government spending by the equivalent of about one-third of one percentage point of GDP… Even so, politicians seem willing to conjure up the threat of a credit downgrade, scaring Canadians into falsely believing universal pharmacare is unaffordable. (Instead, the Liberals may propose a smaller means-tested program.) … don’t be fooled into believing it’s because we can’t afford it.

Tags: budget, Health, ideology, pharmaceutical
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »

National Pharmacare – Time to Get on With It

Wednesday, November 15th, 2023

National pharmacare is overdue. In 21st century healthcare, drugs are not a luxury nor a discretionary add-on. They are an essential part of healthcare delivery that should be covered universally. Canadians have already waited too long, and far too many of them don’t get the medication they need to stay healthy and manage chronic disease. The federal government can act as a catalyst by making a credible and responsible financial commitment… to improve public plan coverage.

Tags: economy, featured, Health, jurisdiction, mental Health, participation, pharmaceutical, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »

“Not broken, just underfunded”: for-profit care won’t reduce wait times, CCPA report says

Wednesday, November 15th, 2023

“Ontario does not lack the physical space and equipment to improve wait times for surgeries and medical imaging; what is missing is the health care workforce and funding necessary to do the work.” … Ontario is set to repeat the mistakes of Alberta, a province that saw wait times increase and total surgical volumes decline as public funding and staffing were diverted into investor-owned centres.

Tags: budget, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, privatization
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »

Family doctors are suffering and so are their patients

Monday, November 13th, 2023

The money that family doctors make is at the very bottom of the range of all physicians’ pay… when we are responsible for all the overhead costs of operating a clinic, which are rising every year, and our fees don’t increase to keep up, the difference has to be made up somewhere and it comes out of the doctor’s pocket… it is getting harder and harder to operate a financially sustainable family medicine practice.