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Politics and your health care profession May 6, 2002 Mr. Tony Fell, Chair OPEN LETTER Dear Mr. Fell: I am writing regarding your recent statements on the privatization of health care. I represent about 25,000 health care workers, including health science professionals at the University Health Network. Should more health care services be privatized? Will it save taxpayers money? The evidence from around the world says a resounding NO. Americans, for instance, spend far greater amounts of money on health care than Canadians do. Yet influential and wealthy people continue to advance the fiction that privatization makes things cheaper. Take all the current costs of running your hospital. Then add corporate profits, good ones, or no shareholder would invest a dime. Don’t think you can save on labour costs -- 80 per cent of hospital costs. Cut wages, and people will just choose another profession. Guess what - running your hospital now costs a lot more. If our hospital laboratories are privatized, who benefits? The patients? The staff? Neither – it would simply funnel public dollars through Bay Street into the private labs. Corporations would cash in on the distress of our patients. Your proposal for opening up the system to extra billing is out-of-date and unworkable. It was tried and discarded because it contravened the goal of universally accessible health care. You are reported to have said that "if governments cannot provide additional funding they should change the rules" and the private sector should be allowed to step in. Let me correct you: If governments cannot provide additional funding then they should change the rules so wealthy people such as yourself would start paying the income tax needed to support adequate services, which Ontarians now enjoy at the best rates in the world. And by the way: usually somebody gets a knee replacement because they have no quality of life, and can’t get around properly. Far from being a luxury item, a knee replacement can make the difference between disability and ability. I’m proud to say our professionals at UHN play a vital role in helping patients through this difficult process as well. Your comments clearly demonstrate the need to recruit people for positions of power in our public institutions from a background OTHER than the corporate sector and the Canadian Alliance. Instead we need people from a representative diversity of backgrounds who are committed to public service and the public interest. Yours for public medicare, Leah Casselman, President cc: Tony Clement, Minister of Health, 10th Floor, Hepburn Block, Queen’s Park, Toronto, ON M7A 2C4; David MacKinnon, President Ontario Hospital Assn., 2800 - 200 Front Street West, Toronto, ON M5V 3L1; Tom Closson, CEO, University Health Network, 190 Elizabeth Street, Toronto, ON M5G 2C4 Politics and Your Health Care Profession Index
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