Defend Public Healthcare

Attack on health care worker benefits:  The Ontario Ford government has specifically targeted in the Budget health care worker compensation  through cuts in premium  payments (e.g. shift payments), overtime, and sick leave. "Improving" scheduling is also part of the plan.  The stated goal   is to cut $250 million annually through such changes by 2021-22. This is squarely aimed at hourly paid employees. Ma nagers don't get overtime and premium payments, and they are not likely to be targeted by attendance management programs or scheduling "improvements".  With about half a million hourly paid employees working in health care a $250 million cut would mean about  a cut of about $500 per employee per year.   The Ford government claims in the Budget that this will have "no impact on patient care or front-line staff."   In fact, a $500 cut may be low -- as i t will be especially hard to harvest such amounts from  contracted , for-profit corporations (

The group that will do the best out of the recent provincial Budget are the doctors.  According to the just released Budget  Estimates , OHIP funding (which  goes overwhelmingly to physicians and practitioners) will go up $1.2 billion or 8% compared to last year's Estimates.  (Note -- this is a little different, and less accurate, than the comparisons with last year's interim amounts reported in the 2019 Budget and used elsewhere in this note.  It is the only comparison publicly available for OHIP as of the moment, however. The Financial Accountability Office has suggested that the actual OHIP spend last year would be less than in the Estimates by several hundred million. So the actual increase this year may be larger than $1.2 billion. We will know for sure when the Public Accounts finalize the books for 2018-19 in September.)   This large increase is likely due to the February 2019 interest arbitration award for doctors, an award that was praised as " fair " by

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 run on a promise of ending hospital hallway healthcare, and squeezed out a bit more in-year funding for hospitals last fall.   Unfortunately, as with so much from this government, the rhetoric does not match the reality.  Here's why this is much less than it might appear on first blush. [1] While the government promises to “create” 3,000 more beds over ten years, they do not promise that the hospitals will operate 3,000 more beds than they currently do.  There is no promise to increase hospital bed capacity.   There isn't even a promise to have 3,000 more spaces for beds.  As our hospitals are aging, spaces for some existing beds will no longer be usable in ten years. Will they