Defend Public Healthcare

Conservatives often suggest that public sector settlements are out of whack with private sector settlements. In fact, the evidence from Ontario over the last couple of decades proves the opposite. Public sector settlements have fallen behind private sector settlements.  Here is the data from the Ontario Ministry of Labour: Percent increase Annual average  increase Public Sector Settlements Annual average increase Private Sector Settlements 1990 6.8% 6.3% 1991 5 4.6 1992 2.6 2.7 1993 0.5 1.9 1994 0.1 1.1 1995 0.2 1.7 1996 0.3 2.2 1997 0.7 2.3 1998 1.3 2.1 1999 1.4 3.1 2000 2.7 2.4 2001 2.9 3.0 2002 2.9 3.0 2003 3.5 1.9 2004 3.1 2.7 2005 2.7 2.4 2006 3...

The majority of the costs reported by the Auditor General for the cancellation of the Mississauga gas plant were payments to the U.S. based investment firm that provided financing for the project -- $149.6 million. The private company doing the project (Greenfield)  negotiated  expensive financing for the project with this U.S. investment firm -- 14% annual interest. Compared to the cost of public financing, that is through the roof, perhaps 7 or 8 times higher. The Auditor General confirms this interest rate, and adds that "Penalties for Greenfield’s defaulting on the agreement were heavy: Greenfield would have to immediately pay back all amounts drawn with interest, as well as interest on the full undrawn amount for the full eight-year term of the agree­ment." Worse, "the OPA (the Ontario Power Authority, which was acting for the government after it decided to cancel the project) was unaware of any of these onerous penalty terms when it signed a Novembe...

Martin Regg Cohn, Queen's Park columnist for the Toronto Star ,  expressed his outrage at some length today at the College of Pharmacists.  Apparently, they did not answer media questions  about the diluted chemotherapy drug scandal quickly enough. But he says nothing of the response from the private corporation that actually mixed the chemotherapy drugs That company has -- according to the Star's sister paper, the Spectator -- repeatedly refused interview requests and refers questions to the Ministry of Health and LTC.  Early on, it  reportedly threatened legal action  if its name was mentioned and  suggested  the problem lay elsewhere.  As one CEO at an affected hospital said yesterday “They have not been forthcoming, for whatever reason, with a lot of information.” This illustrates a key difference between public bodies and private corporations -- the former are expected by the public and the media to be open, ...

Yesterday , I noted that public sector employment in Ontario has declined as a percentage of total employment. But public sector employment in Ontario is also low when compared with the other provinces. In 2012, public sector employment was 19.6% of all classes of workers in Ontario (public sector, private sector, and self-employed).  Canada-wide, however, the average is 20.6%.   In all other provinces except Alberta and British Columbia, public sector workers are a bigger part of the workforce.  Public sector workers are also a bigger percentage of the population in all other provinces, except Alberta and British Columbia.   If we had the same percentage of the population working in the public sector as the Canada-wide average, we would have another 65,000 public sector jobs in Ontario.  The same would be true if we had the same percentage of jobs in the public sector as the Canada-wide average.    Finally, at 65% of the workforc...

Opponents of public services often try to portray the public sector as having grown disproportionately.  In fact, since 1976, the number of public sector employees has not quite kept pace with the population. In 1976, the number of public sector employees in Ontario  as reported by Statistics Canada averaged 830,800.  By 2012, the number had increased to 1,330,700 -- a 60.2% increase.  That sounds like significant growth -- true. But the population has increased  from 8,413,779 in 1976 to 13,505,900 in 2012, a 60.5% increase.   In other words, population growth has run slightly ahead of the growth in public sector employment.     In 1976, close to 10% of the population worked in the public sector.  It stayed pretty much this way until the Mike Harris government came to power when it dipped below 9%.  It returned close to the historical range in the last six years or so, declining in 2012 to below the 1976 averag...

The Ontario government has finally taken some steps to respond to the long-standing problem of bed shortages in Windsor, promising 60 new beds.  Quite a turn-around, given the full-on attack on hospital services that characterizes much of government health policy. There has been a whole stream of hospital back-up problems in Windsor -- the elimination of 120 hospital beds between  1996 and 2010,  a major increase in ambulance off-load delay s, an attempt to impose  an illegal $600 a day charge  on hospital patients,  an officially recognized bed crisis, the failure of a public-private partnership long term care project, and, most recently, the failed attempt to create 18 hospital beds in a for-profit retirement home. It's not clear what finally got the government to make such a promise. They have promised 30 inpatient beds and 10 rehabilitation beds for Windsor.   They have also promised twenty "short stay" beds -- but it is not clear (to me...

England has had a disproportionate impact on health care reform in Ontario over the last decade or so --under both Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments.   After the election of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat government in Britain in 2010, English health policy took a decided turn   towards bonzo-privatization.  (As elsewhere, this was done on a "need to know" basis: the electorate were only informed about the policy  after the election.) So it was with a worried eye that I looked at the latest report   on these reforms and what they might mean for Ontario from Ontario's (very establishment-oriented) health care think tank, "The Change Foundation". The good news is that The Change Foundation shows rather tepid interest in the latest English reforms.   Here, for example, are their two take away lessons from the English reforms: Quality improvement in primary care must be integrated with a performance measurement framework...