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<\/p>\n\u201cAgain, it\u2019s for profit,\u201d DellaVedova told the Sault Star in an interview.<\/p>\n
The Ford government is pushing a health-care solution that benefits private companies at the expense of patients, she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese institutions, these clinics, these long-term care homes, they don\u2019t exist primarily to provide health care,\u201d DellaVedova said. \u201cThey exist primarily to provide profit. It\u2019s right there in the word. Public means it\u2019s for us \u2026 it\u2019s for the public. For-profit means it\u2019s for the shareholders, for the business owners. It\u2019s for their profit. It doesn\u2019t exist for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n \u201cTragically, many residents died alone,\u201d OHC said at the time. \u201cThe extraordinary and horrific death rates in for-profit LTC homes expose inadequacies of care and the differences between public and non-profit ownership and for-profit ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n \u201cMy goodness, we had a lot of safeguards in place for for-profit long-term care, and look what happened,\u201d DellaVedova said. \u201cFor-profit long-term care does not serve their residents the way a public long-team care facility does.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYour Health Act\u201d language is consistent with the Canada Health Act, Jones said, adding \u201cOntarians will continue to pay with their OHIP card, never their credit card.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n Critics also say Northern Ontario, already plagued by a dearth of doctors and other health-care professionals, would be hit especially hard by this bill, as privatization would only lure workers away to better-paying jobs with more reasonable hours.<\/p>\n Citing Ontario Medical Association numbers suggesting Northern Ontario is short of at least 300 doctors, the federal NDP contends the province\u2019s \u201cpursuit of for-profit care\u201d would poach workers out of the public system, making wait times even longer for patients. The NDP suggests hiring more doctors and nurses in Northern hospitals.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n \u201cThey\u2019re overworked, they\u2019re underpaid, and it\u2019s quite understandable that physically and emotionally they\u2019re not up to some of the challenges,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s been going on for too long.\u201d<\/p>\n Registered Nurses\u2019 Association of Ontario would agree. The association\u2019s Region 11 board representative Maxine Lesage told the Sault Star earlier a chief concern is nurses leaving traditional employment to go to private agencies or head into the U.S., prompted by frustrations over working conditions here. Canadian-trained nurses flocking to Florida and elsewhere south of the 49th parallel is nothing new, but pandemic challenges and other such burdens in the health system here have prompted more to relocate, Lesage said.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n Nurses leaving the profession altogether in \u201cunprecedented\u201d numbers has\u00a0Lesage and her RNAO colleagues especially gobsmacked and grieved.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you hear that, your heart does break because it takes a certain kind of individual to be a nurse,\u201d she added. \u201cYou really have to care about individuals \u2026 it\u2019s an unselfish profession. It really is.\u201d<\/p>\n