How privatization of social services and healthcare is moving forward in Ontario from an anonymous ODSP employment provider: (from here with links to articles here and here)
Ford two years ago brought in American companies who have been figuring out what approach / messaging to take that would be ‘acceptable’ to Canadians with the intent of cutting our services. They became non profit agencies in Canada. So they can call themselves “Canadian” non profits. Our tax payer money is paying them to chip away at our healthcare and social service systems. We will wind up being paid huge tax dollars to then have our services be made minimal and virtually nonexistent. They are calling it privatization – but it is privatization with these companies as the decision makers. These companies are really good marketers/sales people and know how to make things “look and feel” good.
The tip of the iceberg is that they are transferring ODSP employment assistance and supports to help people on ODSP find and maintain employment. They are moving this from from Social Service to the ministry of labour colleges and universities....going from region to region switching these services over to be ‘managed’ by these companies – making huge profits from this with ODSP and OW’s employment supports. They are paying our agencies assisting these clients less than ODSP paid has done and I assume taking the rest of our hard earned tax dollars. They are distracting the job developers and counsellors working with the clients looking for work with at least double the administrative work and have put in place algorithms so one agency cannot share a client with another agency – even though they may have different expertise and ways to support and help the client with obtaining employment.
So why is Ford doing this??? There is no advantage to the tax payer – there are huge disadvantages – the only conclusion anyone can come to is, He is doing it for the kick backs and that appears to be how he operates. Ford has opened the door for these are American companies coming into Canada, acquiring non-profit status here and making huge amounts from taxpayer’s money and allotting a small stipend of it for us to have our social & health services and to the mentally ill and poverty stricken and ill."
A bit more in the comments:
They've gone much farther than most people realize. Ontario Health is a new Crown Corporation that will have total control over the health care budget. We will see more corporations like Telus acting as intermediary. They're already a big player. The majority of the Board are corporate CEOs, including some who spent time in the US corp. There is a physician on the board who used to work with the group that provides physician malpractice insurance. They run up bills so patients can't afford to sue.
Some people may wonder why US companies? The answer lies with the Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Under the terms of the FTA, foreign companies can sue the Canadian government in a special trade tribunal for lost anticipated profits -- it's like a one-way street -- services can be privatized, and the terms of the FTA make it very difficult to impossible for any services, once privatized, to be made public once again. This is why the Rae government never introduced public auto insurance, due to the threat of being sued for damages for lost anticipated profits.
ETA: Jean Yoon's post:
"Maybe we should stop using the term privatization; and describe the redistribution of public dollars to commercial interests an restructuring services to lock the people into exploitative commercial contracts in perpetuity as theft - of our safety and the shared savings of the government."
ETA: Ontario Health Coalition's fact sheet on Two-Tier Healthcare and Private Clinics
Vote like your life depends on it. One day, it will.
2 comments:
Back door privatization, eh? I wonder how the per person transfer payments from federal income tax will be given to Ontario when the deed is done. So far as I am aware, those payments are for the public health care system, not a publicly-FUNDED-but-private health care system.
Is this privarization being discussed in the shorty election campaign, when the dullards of Ontario will likely re-elect Ford to build roads? I haven't heard of it. The American healthcare companies are over in the UK working for Boris the court jester to do the same thing as Fraud is apparently doing in Ontario, but that's at a national level. Suing for loss of profits here if the Ontario scheme goes down with a successor government, it seems to me, will devolve if successful to Ontario paying the whole cost -- no way the rest of the country is going to pay for Ontario's stupidity. Well, hold on, perhaps the dolts who run Alberta and saskatchewan will have to pay for their similar bills as well.
The whole subject is not really being discussed openly. Oh well, you'll be able to look forward to overpriced health care run as a windfall profit business, and the care level of Mike Harris'e old folks homes where seniors go to die prematurely, playing pool, having sing-songs, printed meal menus with food by "chefs", and "cared for" by underpaid workers who'll quit at the first sign of the next pandemic.
Canada is being balkanized by the Right for simple profit for fatcats both here, and in the US of course. Healthcare becomes a business, patients are just one of the inputs in the sausage factory designed to wring profit not excellence of care from the "system".
Here's my idea -- make the doctors who want to work in the new "system" pay their entire medical training, no subsidies. Privatize that and they'll see the real cost to them for being selfish. It's like nutters of the Skippy Pepe Poilievre variety. They want to use, for free, infrastructure paid for by us all, like the local gravel producer here. Their overloaded trucks ruin the roads between the quarry and the concrete plant and they pay nothing to maintain them. Ain't capitalism great?
The total incuriosity of the public to understand the way things work to their disadvantage always amazes me. Clueless clots abound and the sharp greedy people cash in on the societal stupidity, while inventing lies to excuse their behaviour.
There are definitely pockets of people discussing Ford's privatization (a continuation of the Harris years, and all likely organized and controlled by Harper) - enough that signs were made and I see them here and there. But now that the Toronto Star joined the others with a new uber right-wing CEO, I don't expect to see much in the media about it. I not sure it's the doctors who will be profiting as much as the managerial team of each hospital. I've heard lots of doctor in stark opposition to the idea. If you haven't read it yet, Linda McQuaig wrote a very comprehensive book about the privatization in Ontario so far, slaying ALL the parties as part of the profit-seeking scheme.
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