{"id":30760,"date":"2025-06-17T23:30:26","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T03:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca\/?p=30760"},"modified":"2026-03-26T14:18:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T18:18:04","slug":"local-health-care-advocate-shocked-by-225-bill-at-private-clinic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca\/index.php\/local-health-care-advocate-shocked-by-225-bill-at-private-clinic\/","title":{"rendered":"Local health care advocate &#8216;shocked&#8217; by $225 bill at private clinic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(June 17, 2025) By: Alicia Anderson, TBnewswatch.com<\/p>\n<p><em>Thunder Bay Health Coalition president Jules Tupker says he&#8217;s one among hundreds of people across Ontario who have made complaints about private clinics in the province.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>People across Ontario are walking out of private health care clinics with bills they didn\u2019t see coming, sometimes totalling in the\u00a0thousands, says\u00a0the Ontario Health Coalition.<\/p>\n<p>Jules Tupker, president of Thunder Bay Health Coalition, said that during a routine eye examination last spring a local optometrist suggested he\u00a0book an appointment for cataract removal \u2014 and said he was shocked by the private clinic and its hidden fees.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I went to visit him, they did a number of tests with his assistant including eye measurements and a couple of other things that they had for me,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I went to leave the office, the secretary at the front said &#8216;you have to pay me $225 for the services,&#8217;\u201d said Tupker.<\/p>\n<p>Unaware of the fees, he said he had booked his wife\u2019s appointment for the same time and was worried about paying the bill up front.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was fearful,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought if I question it, then they&#8217;re going to say I can go somewhere else and I have to wait again for a number of months or whatever to get the surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI already knew about the Health Coalition&#8217;s campaign to make sure that you don&#8217;t have to pay for medical necessary services, but I didn&#8217;t want to jeopardize my opportunity to get the surgery, so I paid the $225,\u201d Tupker said.<\/p>\n<p>After leaving the appointment, Tupker said he filed for restitution and reached out to The Ontario Health Coalition, joining 200 others who have made complaints about private clinics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll Canadians have the right to medically needed surgeries, diagnostic tests, and physician services without requirement to pay when they&#8217;re sick,\u201d said Natalie Mehra, executive director for OHC.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the 200 complaints include manipulative pricing, where clients have reported being told they need surplus services or that queue jumping to beat wait times is needed, said Mehra.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPatients frequently tell us that they are being told they have to pay for medically unneeded things like special lenses, measurements, and other add-ons in order to get cataract surgery,\u201d said Alana King, Research and campaign coordinator for OHC.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd if they don&#8217;t pay for these things that are unnecessary, they can&#8217;t get the surgery they need,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These clinics claim that, you can get it faster if you do it with us,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n<p>In reality,\u00a0King said, looking at the Ontario Health website, the service wait times available in public hospitals are not even close to what private clinics suggest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll these types of complaints completely go against the values of compassion and equity on which public medicare is based on and why public medicare was created in the first place,\u201d said Mehra.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><a class=\"ga ga-ext\" style=\"color: #3366ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca\/index.php\/open-letter-petition-to-enforce-the-canada-health-act-stop-user-charges-for-patients\/?utm_source=tbnewswatch.com&amp;utm_campaign=tbnewswatch.com%3A%20outbound&amp;utm_medium=referral\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-ga-category=\"OutboundLink\" data-ga-action=\"OutboundLink\" data-ga-label=\"https:\/\/www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca\/index.php\/open-letter-petition-to-enforce-the-canada-health-act-stop-user-charges-for-patients\/\">Ontario Health Coalition<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is encouraging anyone with a complaint about private clinics to\u00a0reach out.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">Click here for the original article<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(June 17, 2025) By: Alicia Anderson, TBnewswatch.com Thunder Bay Health Coalition president Jules Tupker says he&#8217;s one among hundreds of people across Ontario who have made complaints about private clinics in the province. People across Ontario are walking out of private health care clinics with bills they didn\u2019t see coming, sometimes totalling in the\u00a0thousands, says\u00a0the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Local health care advocate &#039;shocked&#039; by $225 bill at private clinic - Ontario Health Coalition<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"(June 17, 2025) By: Alicia Anderson, TBnewswatch.com Thunder Bay Health Coalition president Jules Tupker says he&#039;s one among hundreds of people across\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca\/index.php\/local-health-care-advocate-shocked-by-225-bill-at-private-clinic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Local health care advocate &#039;shocked&#039; 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