The Financial Accountability Office has released the Ford PC government’s funding plans for the various health care sub-sectors. The news is not good. The funding plans for 2022/3 in several key line items are down compared to actual funding in 2021/2: Funding plans for long-term care services are down $26
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Defend Public Healthcare: The government has plenty of money to address the healthcare crisis. They just won’t
The Ford government re-released its spring Budget this week with a new first quarter fiscal and economic update, providing a little bit more information, albeit from a government with a track record for wildly inaccurate Budget plans. The increases in spending announced are so tiny they can all be
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Violence is widespread and growing in Ontario health care
Contrary to popular perception, there are more assaults in hospitals than in any other industry. Long-term are facilities are also major site for assaults. Health care as a whole has by far the most assaults that result in lost time injuries – far, far more than any other sector. Assaults in hospitals
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Declining hospital bed capacity continues under Ford government
The massive decline in hospital beds in Ontario since the early 1990s is, by now, well known. Less well known is that hospital beds per capita have continued to decline since, at least, 2010. This chart excludes Neonatal ICU beds and bassinets. CIHI does not report data, in this case, for
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Ford government stumbles into a health care staffing crisis
Job vacancies across the Ontario economy have sky-rocketed over the last two years, with a ten percent increase in 2020 and a 66% increase in 2021. Compounded that represents a 82% increase in job vacancies. Correspondingly the average offered hourly wage for all occupations went up 4.6% in Ontario (to
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Spending on health must get much larger
The long term fiscal and economic outlook released this week by Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office (FAO) shows that big increases in health care spending are required in the years ahead. The FAO forecasts that provincial government spending on health care will increase from an average of 6.4% of gross domestic
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Health care support workers have the highest number of workplace injuries
Lost time injury (LTI) claims for workers compensation by health care support workers have shot up in the last few years, even before COVID-19. For many years, claims were in the 2,500 range, before starting an upward track in 2014, rising to 4,271 in 2019, just before COVID-19 hit.
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: The Ford PC government thanks hospital employees by telling them to work harder for less
With as much fanfare as it could muster, the Ford PC government has re-announced its Budget plan of $300 million for hospitals to deal with the backlog of surgeries and procedures caused by the COVID-19 shut down of hospital services. Despite the fanfare, the Financial Accountability Office (FAO) has reported
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Doug Ford and the PCs plan another decade of austerity — except even harsher this time
Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office (FAO) reports that the nominal health care funding increases planned by the Ford PC goverment between 2019/20 to 2029-30 fall well short of the nominal increases over the previous nine years (2010/11-2019/20, the period of public sector austerity that followed the last recession). Indeed, as the
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Ford PC government plans years of cuts to hospital services
The pandemic led to a brief reprieve from the austerity that has bedevilled Ontario hospital care since the great recession. After decades of being on par with other provinces, hospital funding fell far behind the rest of Canada. At the start of the pandemic the Ontario government was obsessed with
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: The Ontario Budget: Hard Times Ahead
Health Care: To ease future cuts, the government established a budgeting system this year which would see much of the COVID-related funding budgeted under special funds distinct from the normal ministries. So much of the increased funding for the Ministry of Health or Ministry of Long-Term Care is not reflected
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Health care funding $466 million less than budgeted
In the 2019/20 budget health care was budgeted at $59.97 billion. That was subsequently increased by over $450 million to $60.42 billion, mostly through Supplementary Estimates late in the fiscal year. The Financial Accountability Office (FAO) now reports (based on current, but not yet final figures) that health care spending
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Ford government plans to deepen privatization of hospital and home care services: Bill 175
The proposed reforms under Bill 175 will privatize health care services, weaken public oversight, remove legislative protections, undermine home care working conditions, and unleash an untested, home care experiment. Chaos beckons. Bill 175 is permissive, allowing a laissez-faire framework for home and community care. It repeals the more detailed Home
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Ford government will not spend $2 billion of its budget — deficit on track to fall $3 billion
As usual, the provincial government is under-spending its (revised) budget. Based on figures for provincial expenditures for the the first nine months of the fiscal year, the government-funded Financial Accountability Office (FAO) estimates that the government will under-spend its budget by about $2 billion this year. While that sounds like
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Ontario revenue up $1.5 billion since November – but no new health care spending announced
Ontario’s third quarter finances came out yesterday. They confirm that although planned health care funding has increased $404.1 million since the 2019/20 Budget, no further increase has been achieved since November’s Ontario Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review. That is another 0.64% funding increase achieved for health care since the Budget. Also notable:
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: PC Government Plans Many More Health Care Cuts
The Financial Accountability Office (FAO) Budget and Economic review has identified planned government spending savings that come via [1] announced program changes (program cuts like the government’s cut to OHIP+), [2] announced efficiency targets (identified areas where the government hopes it will find savings without program cuts), and [3] cuts
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Ford Plans to Cut Health Care Worker Benefits by $250 million
Attack on health care worker benefits: The Ontario Ford government has specifically targeted in the Budget reducing premium payments (e.g. shift payments), overtime, and sick leave for health care workers. The plan is to cut $250 million annually through such changes by 2020-21 (i.e. next year). As managers don’t get overtime
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Health Care Funding Means Cuts are Coming (and its Armageddon for other programs)
Hospital operating funding is budgeted to increase $384 million this fiscal year – close to a 2% increase compared to the interim estimated provincial funding for last year. This is about the same as the increases during the years of Liberal austerity and falls about 3% below cost pressures. Even if hospitals
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: 3000 more hospital beds? Rhetoric falls short of realty with Doug Ford’s government
Soon after the Budget, the government announced they would spend $27 billion on hospital infrastructure over ten years and create 3,000 more hospital beds. For a moment, it may have seemed that we had prized a small victory from the Ford government. The movement did, after all, force them to
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Are health care administrative expenses out of control in Ontario?
The Progressive Conservative government has justified its health restructuring plans with the claim that administrative expenses are much higher in Ontario than in Canada. When introducing the reforms, health minister Christine Elliott claimed, “Over the last five years, Ontario has spent 30% more than the Canadian average in administrative expenses on
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