Last night on TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin, Lucy Morton, Chair of OPSEU’s Health Care Divisional Council and Community Health Care Professionals Division, joined the panel discussing Bill 41, the Patients First Act.
The Act, which became law in December, is set to overhaul Ontario’s health care system, including the elimination of Ontario’s 14 Community Care Access Centres (CCACs), which currently oversee publicly funded home care. Despite public hearings, dozens of submissions, and a host of recommendations, Bill 41 passed with virtually no changes.
OPSEU has raised red flags about the increased threat of health care privatization under Bill 41, and the concentration of power in the unaccountable Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs).
Under Bill 41, “there is no accountability and no responsibility to actual patients, even though the patients are supposed to be first,” said Morton.
Morton explained that it is patients and the public that pay for our health care system. As taxpayers, we absolutely own it! Privatization, which has been touted to save money, has actually cost more with less services for patients.
To view OPSEU’s full submission, including its 20 recommendations to strengthen Bill 41 in the public interest, click here.
To watch the full program on YouTube (Part 1: Reforming Ontario's Health Sector and Part 2: Do Patients Really Come First?) click on the corresponding video below:
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