While Canada has achieved universal public healthcare coverage, that does not mean conservative forces have given up trying to erode that coverage and expand corporate care where it does not currently exist. The battle has become particularly intense in Ontario under the Ford Progressive Conservative government, which is implementing serious
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Defend Public Healthcare: 28% increase in COVID hospitalizations compounds Ontario hospital capacity crisis
COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data. This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Health care capacity crisis? Wait ’til you see what Ford has planned.
Despite the current health care capacity crisis, the Ford government plans to cut health care service levels. Hospitals: The news is bad for hospital services. The new Financial Accountability Office (FAO) report on the government’s health care funding plan reports the government plans 3,000 new beds over the next decade — that’s about
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: 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: Hospital funding announcement falls short
Bowing to public pressure and the over-capacity crisis in our hospitals, the Ontario minister of health and long-term care, Eric Hoskins, announced Friday hospital funding of $187 million to deal with next year’s flu season. While this is significant it is inadequate for several reasons: The funding is for the next
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Health care funding falls, again
Real provincial government health care funding per-person has fallen again this year in Ontario, the third year in a row. Since 2009 real funding per-person has fallen 2.6% — $63 per person. Across Canada real per person funding is in its fourth consecutive year of increase. Since 2009, real provincial
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Do economies of scale explain low hospital funding in Ontario?
Funding for hospital services in 2015/16 was 25% more in the rest of Canada than in Ontario. Some have tried to downplay this, arguing that economies of scale should allow Ontario to provide hospital care more cheaply. Notably, however, the World Health Organization dismisses the notionthat economies of scale are
Continue readingWise Law Blog: Legal Aid Funding to Increase Provincially
Provincial Legal Aid will be provided with $30 million per year from the Justice Department. This, coming after 13 years of federal contributions remaining stagnant at $112 million per year. “All Canadians — no matter their means — should ha…
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Health care funding falls far short even as Ontario heads out of deficit
A new report from the Financial Accountability Office (FAO) confirms the difficulties government cuts are placing on public health care in Ontario.
The FAO is a government-funded but somewhat independent office that reviews Ontario government economic and fiscal claims. This is not a left wing think tank — rather it is very much part of the received establishment.
Its latest report notes that government spending plans will fall $4 billion short of what is required to maintain services at 2015/16 levels by 2018/19:
Moreover:
The biggest funding gap is in health care.
Health care is facing 5.2% cost pressures the FAO notes: 2.2% due to population growth and aging and 3% due to growing wealth and inflation.
“Assuming that the quality and type of health care services provided in 2015 remains the same over the outlook, the FAO estimates that population growth and aging would contribute 2.2 percentage points per year on average to the growth in health spending. A stronger economy, which leads to higher incomes and price inflation would contribute a further 3.0 percentage points. Combined, these factors would lead to 5.2 per cent annual growth in health spending.”
The FAO notes the government plans health care funding increases of 1.8% over the next four years.
Accordingly it concludes:“Given these factors, it is unclear how the government will achieve its target of 1.8 per cent annual spending increases (for health) over the next four years.” (My emphasis.-DA)
While in the past, our health care system was getting “enrichments” — it is now getting significant “efficiencies”.
Ontario’s Economic and Fiscal Situation: The news from the FAO is a little better than it has been in the past.
According to the FAO, the economy is improving, revenue is growing (albeit not quite so quickly as the government hopes), and spending pressures are building. As a result, the government (absent new policies) will briefly achieve little or no deficit in 2017-18, but then return to deficit. The key debt to GDP ratio however has stopped getting worse and is beginning to modestly improve.
The take-away? For what it is worth, this representative of mainstream opinion believes we are more or less on track for a balanced budget in 2017/18, that government funding for public programs is falling behind real cost pressures, that health care is being hit hardest of all, that it is unclear how government can achieve such low level funding increases for health care, that funding for public programs and especially health care will have to increase in the medium term, and that, absent new policies, we will go back into modest deficit after 2017/18.
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Ontario loses 19,000 public sector workers while rest of Canada gains 73,000
There has been a general trend downwards in public sector employment in Ontario according to Statistics Canada. In the last two years, Ontario has lost 19,000 public sector workers, with most of the loss occurring in the last year.The downwards trend i…
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Health Care and the Budget: Not Much
Health care and hospital funding: Despite significant new revenue and lower than expected debt costs, health care spending is almost exactly identical to the amounts planned in last year’s Budget for 2015-2018. The total health budget for 2015/1…
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Health care declining as share of economy and program spending
Federal Health Cash Transfers to the Ontario government will rise 5.94% in 2016/17, or by $778 million. This, in itself should amount to a 1.5% increase in Ontario even without a single extra penny from Ontario tax revenues. This will follow…
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Space Race Approach to Fighting Climate Change
Here’s a neat idea: save the planet using the research and development practices used during the space race. The state-lead push for advanced science led to really fun things like cellphones and laser eye surgery. Imagine what we as a species could create if we had the same push into sustainability like we did during […]
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Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: How Ontario public sector health care funding lags behind
The Ontario public sector spends less than almost all other provinces on health care. And it’s falling further behind. Over the most recent four years per capita spending increased 9.7% across Canada, but only 5.2% in Ontario. With this, the Ontario public sector spends less per person than any other province
Continue readingCarbon49 - Sustainability for Canadian businesses: Creative Funding for Green Startups
You are an entrepreneur with a fantastic idea for a green startup. You go to the bank for funding but they turn you down. What do you do? Fear not, green warriors! We will show you five non-traditional funding sources for social and environmental startups, including crowd funding and peer-to-peer
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: US and Canadian public health care costs compared
Despite the lack of universal public insurance, U.S. governments actually spend much moreon health care than Canadian governments. Public sector health expenditure in the U.S.A. accounts for 8.5% of the economy, 7.9% in Canada, and 6.8% through the OECD (the club of 34 rich nations – which, unlike the U.S.A.,
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Premiers focus on cuts and ignore falling federal health care funding
As feared yesterday— the premiers have rolled. They didn’t even dare to beg for better federal health care funding in their media release on health care from their meeting (“The Council of the Federation”) concluding in Niagara-on-the-Lake today. Indeed, their media release did not even use the word “federal” once.
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Will premiers fight for federal health care funding?
At this week’s meeting of the provincial premiers there were some sharp complaints about the federal government. But missing — so far — is any significant complaint about the one issue likely closest to the hearts of Canadians — public health care. Yet the federal government plans to kill
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