In May, responding to the recent problems with chemotherapy mixtures, the Ontario Hospital Association distanced the contracting out of chemo mixtures from the cost cutting that is so widespread in hospitals at the moment: “Contrary to the assertions of some commentators and unions, the outsourcing of compounding by hospitals was not
Continue readingAuthor: Doug Allan
Defending Public Healthcare: Ambulances and Public Health get cash while other sectors starve
From time to time there are rumors that EMS (ambulance services) and municipal public health services may move over to the tender mercies of the Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs), which fund hospitals, home care, long term care, and other health services. Fortunately– for these services — that has not
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Doctors get lion’s share of Budget funding
Forget all the government Budget rhetoric about better home care. The real winners are the docs. The Ontario Budget Estimates are out and the line item primarily covering the doctors (“Ontario Health Insurance”) is going up 2.9 per cent to $13.3 billion. The rest of the health care sector got
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Are employer paid drug plans unsustainable?
A Great West Life Assurance executive recently claimed that private insurance for drug plans was becoming unsustainable — unless changes are made. Almost all private drug insurance plans are paid through employer paid insured benefit plans (often bargained with trade unions). In fact, although there were significant increases during the
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Government: "collective bargaining is achieving results & protecting services"
Yesterday I noted that the Liberal Budget plainly states that they are planning many more years of austerity. So how does it see collective bargaining with public employees? And, moreover, public sector pensions? Collective Bargaining: The government claims that provincial public sector agreements are much lower than other sectors
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Health care spending continues decline
Contrary to the hysteria from conservatives, health care spending continues to decline as a percentage of the provincial budget. Last year, health care accounted for 38.5% of total expenditures, this year the government plans to bring it down to 38.3%. This continues the trend downwards since 2003/4 when health care
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Now the doctors speak out about hospital cuts
Scarborough General Hospital. Photo by Benson Kua While physicians and surgeons have not usually been at the forefront of campaign against cutbacks, more of them have begun to express concerns about hospital cuts in Ontario. Here are three recent examples. with a different emphasis from each. At a Rotary Club
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Ontario Finance Minister plans cuts in public services
The Ontario government just lopped another $2.1 billion off their 2012-13 deficit estimate, cutting it from $11.9 billion (as of January) to $9.8 billion. This means that since 2010 when they started their public sector austerity drive, they have now cut their deficit estimates by $18.1 billion. Deficit (in billions
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Are Ontario P3 projects plagued by corruption?
A commission of inquiry has heard that SNC-Lavalin deliberately went around Quebec’s political party financing rules, leading to a flurry of donations to the governing Quebec Liberal Party in 2009. The donations came as the engineering firm was bidding on a major hospital construction project, the media reports. What is
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Public sector wages lag private sector
Conservatives often suggest that public sector settlements are out of whack with private sector settlements. In fact, the evidence from Ontario over the last couple of decades proves the opposite. Public sector settlements have fallen behind private sector settlements. Here is the data from the Ontario Ministry of Labour: Percent
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Public sector wages lag private sector
Conservatives often suggest that public sector settlements are out of whack with private sector settlements. In fact, the evidence from Ontario over the last couple of decades proves the opposite. Public sector settlements have fallen behind private sector settlements. Here is the data from the Ontario Ministry of Labour: Percent
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Ontario P3 fiasco: $90 million cost to finance $59 million loan
The majority of the costs reported by the Auditor General for the cancellation of the Mississauga gas plant were payments to the U.S. based investment firm that provided financing for the project — $149.6 million. The private company doing the project (Greenfield) negotiated expensive financing for the project with this U.S. investment firm
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Chemo fiasco – – the real perils of secrecy
Martin Regg Cohn, Queen’s Park columnist for the Toronto Star, expressed his outrage at some length today over the College of Pharmacists not answering media questions quickly enough about the diluted chemotherapy drug scandal. But he says nothing of the response from the private corporation that actually mixed the chemotherapy
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Public sector employment in Ontario falls short of other provinces
Yesterday, I noted that public sector employment in Ontario has declined as a percentage of total employment. But public sector employment in Ontario is also lower when compared with other provinces. In 2012, public sector employment was 19.6% of all classes of workers in Ontario (public sector, private sector, and
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Too many public sector workers in Ontario?
Opponents of public services often try to portray the public sector as having grown disproportionately. In fact, since 1976, the size of the number of public sector employees has not kept pace with the population. In 1976, the number of public sector employees in Ontario as reported by Statistics Canada averaged
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Government promise of 60 hospital beds for Windsor is much less than it seems
The Ontario government has finally taken some steps to respond to the long-standing problem of bed shortages in Windsor, promising 60 new beds. Quite a turn-around, given the full-on attack on hospital services that characterizes much of government health policy. There has been a whole stream of hospital back-up problems
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: English reforms lose their appeal in Ontario?
England has had a disproportionate impact on health care reform in Ontario over the last decade or so –under both Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments. After the election of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat government in Britain in 2010, English health policy took a decided turn towards bonzo-privatization. As elsewhere, the electorate
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Less nursing, more medical errors
Recent Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) data indicates that Ontario has a relatively high number of “nursing-sensitive adverse events” compared to other provinces. An “adverse event” (or “medical error”) occurs when something happens in the hospital that hurts rather than helps a patient. Over the last three reported years (ending
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Management wage increases dwarf others
Earlier I noted that while the provincial government was imposing concessions (and wage freezes) on unionized public sector workers, the Conference Board of Canada was predicting 2.7% increases for non-union employees in Ontario in 2013 (up from 2.6% actual increases in 2012). Now, Statistics Canada data suggests this may be
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Ontario homes:1 hour less care per elder per day
The death of a resident at a Toronto long-term care facility, allegedly at the hands of another resident, has raised concerns about inadequate staffing levels in Ontario. Recent Statistics Canada data indicates that Ontario “homes for the aged” fall well short of staffing for homes for the aged in other
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