The Auditor General reports that the stock of long-term care beds in Ontario has grown only 3% since 2004-5. Over seven years (until 2011-12) that means an annual average growth rate of 0.42% (or about 319 beds per year). Photo: Derek Tyson That falls well short of population growth. But much
Continue readingAuthor: Doug Allan
Defending Public Healthcare: What’s $1.4 B? Well, it all depends who you are…
Auditor General Jim McCarter The $1.4 billion in, mostly corporate, taxes that the Ontario Liberal government plans to walk away from (according to Auditor General), is exactly equal to the amount of money Finance Minister Dwight Duncan claims he absolutely has to save in the in the first year of the
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Should we tolerate secrecy for public health care?
It’s amusing to review the course of events that led to the revelation of the secrecy concerning the problems at private surgical and diagnostic clinics. The doctors lobbied to move surgical and diagnostics work from the hospitals. The government let the emerging industry slip free of public reporting and
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: More cuts to Ontario deficit coming in January
The Ontario government’s Fall Economic Outlook retroactively confirmed that the 2011-12 deficit was $2 billion less than set out in the 2012 provincial budget. It also lopped $400 million off the 2012-13 deficit. Our economic elites thought this was no big deal — there was a “lack of significant progress” TD Bank
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Liberals prevent public reporting of failed private clinics
Queen’s Park in Darkeness (Grant MacDonald)
Yesterday I fumed about the gall of one academic who claimed that privatized P3s (public private partnerships) had actually increased public transparency.
Even more evidence came today that privatiz…
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: P3 transparency? Hardly: private profit prefers privacy
The corruption scandal rocking a public private partnership (P3) hospital project in Quebec has raised some significant doubts about P3s in Canada. Over the weekend even the normally pro-privatization Financial Post ran a story considering su…
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: P3 corporations give award for crap financing deal
Nouveau CHUM
The Canadian Council for Public Private Partnerships has honoured the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM), the Collectif Santé Montréal (CSM) and Infrastructure Québec with its 2012 “Gold Prize” for financing co…
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: More privatization via Liberal "community care"
Health care privatization continues to come to Ontario via the Liberal government’s version of “community care.” Most obviously this comes by moving services from public hospitals to poorly regulated and for-profit retirement homes. …
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: P3 costs rise as scandal sours investors
MUHC
The Washington Post reports that the sales “of Canadian project-finance bonds are lower this year as an ongoing investigation of alleged corruption in the Quebec construction industry makes the debt more expensive to issue.”
The American paper…
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: No progress on hospital superbugs
There has been no progress stopping the spread of superbugs in Ontario hospitals according to government data.
Reported C. difficile rates are about the same as they have been, starting this past year at 0.35 cases per thousand patient days…
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Moving patients from public hospitals to private retirement homes
Health Sciences North hospital in Sudbury is planning to replace 30 hospital beds with a 25 bed unit inside a private retirement home, the CBC reports.
OCHU/CUPE members protest earlier bed closures at Health Sciences North
Richard Joly…
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Mississauga-Halton gets bigger homecare increase
Another home care funding announcement came out today, this time for Mississauga-Halton.
Mississauga
The news this time was a little better, with a 4.1% funding increase for home care via $5.12 million for the Mississauga-Halton Community Care A…
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Docs up $8,300 each in recent negotiations?
Dr. Michael Rachlis, a well known expert on the health care system, suggests there is more to the recent deal the province hatched with the Ontario Medical Association than has been reported.
He estimates that increased utilization and “fee…
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: McGuinty government demands multiple concessions
As expected, the McGuinty government has made a long series of concession demands at the OPSEU “OPS” negotiations, where OPSEU is bargaining on behalf of 36,000 provincial civil servants. Here is what OPSEU saw from the government on the first day:
…
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: PCs rule out legislative wage freeze deal with McGuinty
The Progressive Conservatives have — effectively — all but ruled out reaching an agreement with the McGuinty government on a legislative public sector “wage freeze”.While complaining that the McGuinty government has not pursued negotiations wit…
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Elderly pushed out of hospitals: Elder Advocate
Jane Meadus of the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly says that some seniors are being pushed out of hospital too soon under the province’s Home First policy, the Ottawa Citizen reports.
“Patient safety is at high risk…While many patients will do well …
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: OSSTF bargaining stops as OPSEU talks start
Negotiations between the government and OSSTF (the union representing public secondary school teachers) have ended. Harvey Bischof, vice president for the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, told the Ottawa Citizen that t…
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Liberal excuse for ending collective bargaining in tatters
September was a big month for collective agreement settlements in Ontario and the wage settlements fell, according to the government of Ontario. Public sector settlements for 36,348 workers saw annual average wage increases of 0.6%.
This o…
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Home and community care funding less than promised
The announcements of new “home and community care” funding (which started last week) continue, this time for the Ottawa area.
Home care activists
First the good news. The $7.15 million announced for the Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) …
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Tiny cracks appear in Liberal attack on collective bargaining
After the architects of the Liberal attack on collective bargaining (Premier McGuinty and Finance Minister Dwight Duncan) announced their exit from provincial politics, the first, very modest, move away from their policy has appeared.
Kathleen Wyn…
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