Giant Trojan Horse visits Queen’s Park in protest of the privatization of hospital services

In response to the government’s plan to issue new licenses to for-profit clinics this fall, OCHU and OHC are demanding that money be invested in public hospitals instead 

Symbolizing the threat of the plan to privatize hospital surgeries, a 15-foot replica of the Trojan Horse visited legislators at Queen’s Park today. The metaphor was deployed by CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, OCHU-CUPE, and the Ontario Health Coalition, who are asking that the Ford government cancel plans to privatize surgeries and instead make investments in public hospitals.

A reference to Greek mythology, “the Trojan Horse represents a gift, which, if accepted, threatens the recipient,” said Michael Hurley, president of OCHU-CUPE. “The false promise here is that privatizing surgeries is a solution to long waits. In fact, privatization redirects money and staff from public hospitals to private, for-profit clinics. As a result, wait-times in the public system get longer as staff shortages lead to service closures. Meanwhile, these private clinics charge out-of-pocket costs, which are unaffordable for most people. Ultimately, they will reduce access based on need, lengthen wait times and weaken our public hospital system.”

Hurley said a recent study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal showed startling results: surgical rates for cataract surgeries went up by 22% for the wealthiest people in Ontario while decreasing by nine per cent for the lowest income-earners.

This is in line with the experience in other countries which have experimented with private delivery of surgeries. The study backs research by the Ontario Health Coalition showing that patients have been charged up to $8,000 at private clinics.

According to the union and the health coalition, “these charges are often manipulative and unethical, and in many cases are a flagrant violation of our public medicare laws.”

The Ford government has been expanding private delivery of services predominantly offered in public hospitals including cataract surgeries and diagnostic tests. This fall, the government will be issuing new licenses to private clinics and providing them funding to perform 100,000 MRIs and CT scans.

“Private for-profit clinics and hospitals are up to two to three times more expensive than public hospitals. The Ford government is taking our public tax funding for health care away from our local hospitals to give it to more costly for-profit clinics,” said Natalie Mehra, the executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition. “Even worse, for-profit clinics threaten public medicare and cause hardship for patients, charging the elderly on pensions thousands of dollars unlawfully for needed surgeries and manipulating them to pay for unnecessary add-ons.”

The two organizations are instead demanding that the government instead make investments in public hospitals to improve staffing and capacity, which already have the infrastructure to offer more services but are lacking funding.

“Ontario now funds our public hospitals at the lowest rate in Canada, with the lowest staffing levels and bed capacity across the country,” said Sharon Richer, secretary-treasurer of OCHU-CUPE. “Yet, the Ontario Conservatives are shifting more than a billion dollars per year away from our public hospitals to private for-profit clinics, hospitals and staffing agencies. The solution is to add enough new hospital beds and staff over the next 10 years to meet the needs of an aging and growing population. The government must also close the loopholes that exempt some occupations from paying the health tax would generate more than enough revenue to offset these costs.”