QUEEN’S PARK — Mike Schreiner released the following statement in response to the tabling of Bill 60, Your Health Act, 2023.
“After years overseeing an escalating healthcare crisis, the government is now proposing to spend more to deliver less by expanding for-profit healthcare.
Bill 60 is designed to prioritize shareholder profits over patient care.
There are no safeguards in this legislation that prevent healthcare staff from being poached from the public system with the promise of higher pay and better working conditions.
The government has failed to explain how ‘health human resources plans’ will prevent poaching from the public system.
The health minister won’t even say how many for-profit licences will be issued, or who will oversee the licensing.
And while the government has been busy offering vague assurances that upselling will be prohibited at these clinics, there are no actual measures that will protect patients in the moment and on the ground.
The government has not provided one credible justification for bringing for-profit, investor-driven surgical centres into our healthcare system when public and non-profit facilities could do the exact same work without public dollars going to private shareholders if they were given sufficient funding and support.
This bill is just another chapter in the government’s long history of underfunding and decimating our public healthcare system.
The people of Ontario want a healthcare system where every public dollar goes towards patient care – not shareholder profits.
There are clear ways that we can solve Ontario’s healthcare crisis – but the Premier’s for-profit plan fails to deliver them.”