Going once, going twice... Health care giants bid for home care Cashing in on need Ontario: Primed for costly privatization The cost of competition Staffing problems Out of pocket expenses on rise Funding and access cutbacks Home care is about women The need for federal action For-profit home care provision: expanding the market Olsten’s shoddy track record What is your province doing? Corporate classrooms costly..."What’s happening is there aren’t enough funds, but there are more clients needing care every day. Seniors’ care has really suffered under the cuts. Some people are getting as little as a one-and-a-half hour visit. In that time, they’re supposed to have personal care like bathing done, as well as cleaning, vacuuming, meal preparation and laundry. It’s awful."
Yvonne Nadeau, Visiting homemaker, Sudbury ON, CUPE 3977
Going once, going twice... Health care giants bid for home care
What’s billed as a good idea for health care has become the focus of corporate bids to privatize health services. It’s called home care, and it could play a key role in the future of Medicare — if it can be protected from the privateers.
As hospital beds disappear and patients are released ‘quicker and sicker,’ reliance on home care grows. So does the incentive for private home care corporations to cash in on a fast-growing sector of health care services. With no national or enforceable standards, and with a patchwork system of funding and regulation, home care is ripe for the plucking in the eyes of for-profit providers.
Caring for profit threatens the continuity and quality of home care. It compromises patient recovery, weakens accountability and replaces decent-paying jobs with minimum wage piecework. Women — both as family caregivers and home care providers — bear the brunt of a system where the lowest bidder rakes in the highest profit.
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