Ontario's Financial Accountability Office (FAO) reports that the nominal health care funding increases planned by the Ford PC goverment between 2019/20 to 2029-30 fall well short of the nominal increases over the previous nine years (2010/11-2019/20, the period of public sector austerity that followed the last recession). Indeed, as the increase planned on a go-forward basis (between this year, 2021-22, and 2029/30) amounts to only 2% annually , we are looking at significantly harsher austerity than the 2010/11-2019/20 period , where funding increased 3.2% annually. As the FAO notes, the health care austerity imposed over 2010-20 "included a number of significant spending restraint measures, including: freezing base operating funding for hospitals from 2012-13 to 2015-16; reducing physician payment rates in 2013 and 2015; and limiting investments in new long-term care beds, with only 611 new beds created between 2011 and 2018." This time around the plan is to impose h
Notes from Leftwords -- Doug Allan