Niagara-on-the-Lake Local received the following letter to the editor from reader Maryellen Holmes on the ongoing issue of privatization of healthcare. Have an opinion to share? Send it to [email protected]
In reply to Mr. A Evans' letter to the editor Feb. 8 in your print edition under the headline, "No apology owed to nurses".
Consider the following, taken from the Ontario Nurses Association website:
Ford’s plan to expand private clinics in Ontario will cost patients dearly, risk lives and significantly worsen staffing shortages, healthcare unions say
Toronto, ON, January 16, 2023 – Five major Ontario healthcare unions are calling on the Ford government to not move forward with its plan to siphon provincial funding from public hospital care and hand it to private, for-profit surgical clinics, a risky venture that will cost Ontarians dearly and damage access to public care.
The unions – CUPE/OCHU, Ontario Nurses’ Association, OPSEU/SEFPO, SEIU Healthcare, and Unifor – say that this move will further starve our public healthcare system of funding and divert front-line staff to enrich private shareholders and diminish access to publicly-delivered healthcare. Patients will wait even longer for healthcare under this scheme and should not be misled into believing they will not pay out of pocket.
They say that since coming to office, this government has implemented policies to demoralize healthcare workers, worsen the staffing shortage and cause burnout through heavy workloads and low wages. Funding private clinics will further damage the ability of Ontario’s public hospitals to provide high-quality care and make it even more challenging to retain front-line staff.
Mr. Evans is mistaken. Never have the nurses' union or nurses in general ever advocated for the privatization of healthcare.
Please do not bring nurses into this healthcare issue. They have worked tirelessly for months on end.
The healthcare problems have been ongoing for decades and only now coming to light because the stress of the pandemic has placed it in a dire situation.
Maryellen Holmes
