The Health Care Crisis V: Privatization

As Canada’s health-care system fails, more and more people will be willing to pay up to avoid the most overcrowded and underserviced parts of it. While no politician will come out in favour of privatizing health care, you do here a lot about “looking for innovative solutions”—which can often mean a second, paid tier.

Is this a viable solution to some of the system’s burden? Or is it the beginning of a downward spiral we need to be very careful about?

Natalie Mehra, is the executive director at the Ontario Health Coalition. She’s a longtime advocate for accessible health care, and she joined The Big Story to share her thoughts on what could possibly go wrong if privatization becomes commonplace.

“The private clinics only serve the profitable patients, they are in it to make profit, and so they take the easiest lightest care patients, the ones that are profitable out of our public hospitals, they take staff out of our hospitals,”she said.

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