How much worse does health care have to get before our leaders finally admit that fundamental change, not just more money, is required?
Ontario’s health-care system is designed to fail and it’s working exactly as planned. Ontarians have put up with long wait times for services and shortages of doctors for so long that it’s easy to think that’s the way health-care works. We have been so conditioned to slow service that we spend more time worrying about someone jumping the queue than we do about the queue itself.
For the last 30 years, successive Ontario governments’ pre-occupation has been controlling health spending, not serving patients. When he was NDP premier, Bob Rae was persuaded that the province had too many doctors and capped medical school enrollment, leading to doctor shortages. His successor, PC premier Mike Harris, reduced the number of hospital beds and nurses. The Liberals followed up by freezing hospital budgets for four years and nurses’ pay for two years.
Then the pandemic hit and Ontario couldn’t cope. That was hardly surprising. There was no excess capacity in the system to handle a pandemic.
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