“Look before you leap into competition and privatized health system”
Apr 3, 2007 09:50 AM
Frank Dobson, a sitting Labour MP and former health minister, who is critical of his own government’s experiment with private health care, has a message for Ontario political parties — “don’t leap into competition and privatized health system. It’s not working well in Britain.”
At this community speaking engagement:
DATE: Wednesday, April 4, 2007
TIME: 7:00 p.m.
PLACE: Evinrude Centre
911 Monaghan Road
Peterborough
Dobson will talk about the failure of the Blair government’s introduction of competition into the British health system. He will be joined by Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) director Natalie Mehra and Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) president Michael Hurley.
“The British experience is particularly timely for Ontario,” says Dobson. The British model, focused on privatization and a payment per-procedure system intended to foster competition among health care providers, is similar to the restructuring that the McGuinty Liberals are proposing — and that can be seen in practice — in the province’s wait-times strategy.
Conservative leader John Tory has been an outspoken advocate for private surgeries, ignoring the U.K. experience that private delivery of acute care is actually more expensive.
Britain’s National Health Service spending has doubled since 1997.
Dobson will take part in a series of forums in eight Ontario communities between April 2 and April 13 sponsored by OHC and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario. Other forum locations include Sudbury, North Bay, Kingston, Windsor, London, St. Catharines and Kitchener.