e-6811 (Health)

Petition to the Minister of Health

• Ontario’s Doug Ford government has redirected thousands of surgeries from public hospitals to private, for-profit clinics and hospitals, and
• The private MRI/CT and cataract surgery clinics are extra-billing patients, charging user fees, and manipulating patients -- particularly elderly patients -- into paying thousands of dollars when they go in for care, and
• Patients are reporting exorbitant charges of $4,000, $8,000, even up to $11,000 for cataract surgery in Ontario’s private clinics, as well as hundreds of dollars for access to primary care in private for-profit nurse practitioner clinics, and
• The Canada Health Act bans user fees and extra-billing of patients & requires that our medical care be funded by taxes (OHIP) and provided without financial barriers, based on Canadians’ medical need not how much money a person has, and
• No patient should be forced or manipulated into paying for their cataract and other surgeries, MRIs and CTs, and primary care – in fact these charges are just what the Canada Health Act was set up to prevent, therefore