NDP: Ford misleading Ontarians about funding for-profit health clinics

QUEEN'S PARK — Incoming Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles and NDP Health critic France Gélinas issued the following response to reports that the Ford government is preparing to significantly ramp up funding for surgeries done in private, for-profit clinics:

"Ontarians: Doug Ford is misleading you when he says that pouring money into for-profit health clinics will have no impact on you.

Ford has been scheming to privatize our public health care for years, starving the public system of funding, suppressing the wages of health care workers and pushing the system to the brink of collapse.

Make no mistake; pushing people desperate for surgeries to for-profit clinics will mean people paying for care with their credit cards. It will mean health care workers pulled out of hospitals.

The NDP will protect Ontario's cherished public health system. Doug Ford must be stopped, or Ontarians will only see further erosion of our fundamental right to access publicly funded and publicly delivered health care, based on our needs, not our ability to pay."