Defend Public Healthcare

Standing outside the Fort Erie Hospital, New Democrat leader Andrea Horwath    condemned catastrophic cuts to health care including the closure of emergency rooms at the hospital and nearby Port Colborne. The Fort Erie hospital's emergency room was closed in September 2009, just months after the emergency room in nearby Port Colborne was also closed. Horwath was accompanied by the family of Reilly Anzovino, a teenager who died after a car crash in 2009 when her ambulance had to travel 20 kilometres to a hospital because Fort Erie's ER was closed. Her family believes her life may have been saved if the Fort Erie ER had remained opened.  Horwath has promised to re-open the two Emergency Rooms. The Liberals side-stepped the issue on Saturday, according to the Toronto Sun.   Right now, we can only guess and fear. But given the funding plans, cuts to more emergency rooms sounds likely  after the election. 

The Ontario government is launching a massive drive to bring many more public private partnership (P3) hospitals to Ontario. While this is getting little play in the election, this form of privatization will have major consequences for Ontario. England  started the P3 (or "PFI") craze, launching a similar, massive P3 drive over a decade ago.  They are now beginning to regret it dearly, with 60 hospitals falling into financial crisis due to their P3 deals.   Here are some of the results in England   according to  the normally conservative newspaper,  The Telegraph  : The taxpayer owes a total of £121.4 billion on P3s  projects -- although they are worth only £52.9 billion. Next year’s P3 bill alone will be £8.6 billion (a little under  $14 billion ) The National Audit Office reported in April that that each household will have to pay nearly £400 ($632) next year. Young people starting work this year will pay taxes for the P3s until they are nearly 70

Medical errors and other adverse events occur in one-third of hospital admissions according to authors of  a new study . This is much, much higher than the number of incidences voluntarily reported.    The study reviewed 795 patient records: voluntary reporting detected 4 events , while a "Global Trigger Tool" detected 354 events , 88 times higher than voluntary reporting.  The authors note:   " Reliance on voluntary reporting ... could produce misleading conclusions about the current safety of care in the US health care system and misdirect efforts to improve patient safety." OCHU has raised concerns that hospital self-reporting of superbug infections may underestimate the extent of the problems.

The stream of terrible news about public private partnerships (P3s) in the motherland of P3s just keeps on coming.  But no one seems to be paying attention in the Ontario government.      Now 60 English hospitals are on the brink of collapse  due to their P3 deals  according to the British Health Secretary (like our Minister of Health) .   Here's commentary from the conservative British daily, the Telegraph  on the latest P3 (or "PFI") fiasco: Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, has revealed that hospital trusts are "on the brink of financial collapse" because of the "crippling" servicing costs they are paying to private companies which built infrastructure under Labour. Remarkably, it turns out that this method of providing big capital projects, beloved of Gordon Brown, is rather more expensive than simply borrowing money from the bond markets and using it to build a hospital. Of course, anyone should have been able to guess this: there is no wa

It was a fight, but, during the federal election, the people forced the federal Conservative Party to commit to increasing health care transfers to the provinces by 6% for two years after the expiry of the current ten year health care transfer deal in 2014.   But we only squeezed two years out of the Tories.  The last deal  guaranteed  secure transfers for ten years.  Much more of a push is needed to get a commitment beyond two years. Now Tim Hudak is the latest Tory to drag his feet.  When asked by the Globe and Mail " if he would push the Prime Minister for a second 10-year accord, Mr. Hudak would say only that he wants funding to continue." This appears to be  as feared : Hudak has  clammed  up in Conservative solidarity.  People outside of the federal and provincial Tory parties have been calling for a ten year deal with the same escalator for some time .    Unfortunately, Hudak's position goes directly against Ontario's interests. New federal health

Problems in B.C.'s contracted out health care support services have deepened.  In March,  Acciona Facility Services  won  the contract for housekeeping services at the Royal Jubilee Hospital, displacing Compass.  The move displaced about 250 workers. The displaced workers began bumping less senior employees working for Compass in other health care facilities. However, the Compass workers at those facilities will be there for only weeks  before a new company ,  Marquise ( also  owned  by Compass), takes over the facilities on Oct. 1.   Employees and the union fear that the same workers may be laid off again. The Hospital Employees Union (HEU) is fighting back.  “Once again, we are witnessing the failure of privatization to protect decent jobs and services in our communities,”  says  HEU secretary-business manager Bonnie Pearson. “And once again health care workers are facing an uncertain future for themselves and their families. It’s an unnecessary travesty that not only af

Employer-based health insurance plans have been in decline in the U.S. for years. About 12.6 million Americans have fallen off employer based plans since 2000, Reuters reports .   This is a worrisome trend for the American public as employer-based plans are the main source of insurance coverage, with 169.3 million Americans covered in 2010. About 1.5 million Americans  fell off  employer paid health care insurance plans in 2010 alone according to Census data.  The good news is that the public sector has picked up the slack from the private sector a little bit:  1.8 million more joined government insurance plans in 2010. The Census report also showed that just short of 50 million Americans remained uninsured, 1 million more than in 2009. Part of the fightback: pictures from today's Globe & Mail of Flight Attendants protesting across the country today for a new collective agreement. A tentative agreement was achieved just hours after the protests.  For more on the ten