Posts Tagged ‘privatization’

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Is paying out-of-pocket for medically necessary care allowed? Doctors and nurses say patients need to know now

Wednesday, November 20th, 2024

… Canada has seen a rise of for-profit medical care in which patients pay out-of-pocket to access primary care through private clinics, virtual platforms or nurse practitioners, who are not covered by provincial health plans… the Canada Health Act’s silence regarding non-physician health-care providers creates a loophole “that certain health-care providers and their clinics are taking advantage of, knowing there is no legal consequence or risk of getting shut down.”

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Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »


The rise and fall of co-op housing in Ontario

Tuesday, November 5th, 2024

Toward the end of the last century, the construction of co-operative housing — and social housing more broadly — garnered substantial federal and provincial investments: thousands of co-operative units were built every year for a span of nearly three decades. But a nexus of political, economic, and social factors in the late 1990s ground the breakneck pace of construction to a crawl. Today, units in co-operative buildings are coveted by those looking for affordable-housing options in an increasingly unaffordable market.

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Ontario cannot allow a few for-profit child care owners to run roughshod over the $10-a-day child care plan

Monday, October 28th, 2024

The problem with [the cheque-in-the-mail approach or as they like to put it “fund the families directly” with a government tax credit or voucher] as a child-care plan is it’s one that works for for-profit child care owners — and absolutely nobody else. It doesn’t lower parents’ fees. Its value is almost immediately swallowed up when owners raise their fees (and then raise them again). It doesn’t improve wages for hard-working educators. It doesn’t build new child-care spaces… we must not let a small group of owners put their private interests ahead of those of our children, families and communities.

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What’s behind Canada’s housing crisis? Experts break down the different factors at play

Friday, October 4th, 2024

The market is most likely to respond to the housing needs of those with strong purchasing power, leaving behind low and moderate income families whose housing needs cannot generate effective market demand. The consequence is growing housing inequality, with many low-income families trapped in precarious living conditions… De-commodifying and de-financializing housing is key. This means expanding community housing, prioritizing community-based solutions and ensuring long-term security for all.

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Are private health care providers breaking the law? Four doctors speak out on for-profit care in Canada

Saturday, August 10th, 2024

… the Canada Health Act, which specifies that medically necessary care pertains to care provided by a physician or in a hospital in order for provinces to receive their full Canada Health Transfer payments. The Act, which became law in 1984, is understandably silent on other health-care providers, such as nurse practitioners, or technological platforms that have emerged in the ensuing years… “… it’s absolutely horrible that people are being asked to pay for primary care especially when we see such a lack of support for physicians working in primary care through the publicly funded route.”

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As for-profit health care expands across Canada, doctors are fighting back

Friday, August 2nd, 2024

… the Canadian Medical Association is calling on governments across the country to ensure medically necessary care is based on need and not on the ability to pay. This includes enforcing a provision in the Canada Health Act that bans making patients pay fees as a condition of receiving publicly insured health services, a practice employed by some private medical clinics.

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I’m an emergency physician. I’ve seen what a functioning health care system needs and it’s not more downloading to pharmacies

Friday, August 2nd, 2024

Rather than focus on episodic care in a way that further fragments the health-care system, a “bold and innovative” government would address the major source of health-care rot — the lack of primary-care providers. It would reorder incentives and invest in strategies to ensure that every Ontario resident has a primary care provider to manage their episodic and complex medical needs… not a pharmacist to manage their sore throats and warts.

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Why dentists are not signing up for the Canadian Dental Care Plan

Saturday, July 20th, 2024

It is time organized dentistry take their professional responsibility seriously, and stop swaying dentists away from the CDCP… There is a long history of organized dentistry opposing public dental care—much like how physicians opposed universal healthcare when it was first rolled out. Since organized dentistry has a history of opposing public delivery of dental care, they are more likely to negotiate in good faith out of concern of this public delivery model being scaled up if private dentists do not sign up for the program.

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Ford’s zealous desire to privatize alcohol sales will be costly for Ontario taxpayers

Friday, July 12th, 2024

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO)… annual profit — $2.5 billion in 2023 — goes into the public treasury, where it pays for things like health care and education… it’s doubtful that Ontarians would want to pay higher taxes so that more profits from alcohol sales could go to highly-profitable grocery store chains… Once all the LCBO’s lost revenue is factored in, the full cost to the public treasury of this privatization will likely be… close to a billion dollars.

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Four decades of tax cuts, deregulation and privatization equals a serious distribution of wealth problem

Saturday, July 6th, 2024

After slashing government funding to public services  starving them into crisis just to pay for tax cuts to the wealthy and their corporations, they then present privatization as the solution to a problem they created. The only thing deregulation and privatization does is create more profit-making opportunities…
Small tax cuts to the general population have been used as a cover for massive tax cuts to the wealthy and their corporations. Reversing tax cuts is not raising taxes, it is restoring revenue to rebuild our once civil society.

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Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »


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