Doug Ford has announced that his government will move some surgeries out of hospitals into for-profit Clinics. I was skeptical of the idea. But Martin Regg Cohn adds some context:

The claim that Ontario is breaking new ground betrays a simplistic ignorance of recent innovations by other progressive provinces. By expanding the number of private clinics delivering publicly funded treatment in Ontario, Ford is following the lead of British Columbia, Quebec, and other provinces that have experimented with practical alternatives to hospital-based care.

The fear of for-profit operators exploiting desperate patients suggests a misunderstanding of medicare’s basic principles: It is a single-payer public system bankrolled by governments; but it is a multi-player delivery system buttressed by private colonoscopy clinics, stand-alone cataract clinics, chain pharmacies, contractor doctors and independent midwives who will deliver your baby in your own private home — far from not-for-profit hospitals. The NDP campaign slogan claiming you’ll have to pay your own way with credit cards has been repurposed by Ford into a guarantee that you’ll only need an OHIP card.

The most cogent criticism of Ford's plan is that medical personnel will be siphoned from hospitals to clinics. That criticism hits at the biggest problem in our health system: We don't have the people to staff the system -- in either hospitals or clinics. The problem existed before the pandemic. The pandemic made the situation worse.

It takes time to train healthcare workers. You can't simply put up a Help Wanted sign and have people walk in off the street. We live in an area where several of our doctors have retired.  New doctors are not coming in to replace them.

Ford may move the location of surgeries. But until he does something about the people who perform the surgeries, the system will be on the brink of collapse.

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