Former Ontario NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo said people should oppose Premier Doug Ford spending money on private healthcare to deal with surgical backlogs. .“In the US, a woman just told me she pays $800.00 a month for her medical insurance (senior with a few medical issues),” said DiNovo in a Sunday tweet. .“This is what @fordnation wants for us.” .DiNovo asked people to “just say NO!”.The Ontario government said on Friday it was preparing to ramp up the number of surgeries done in private clinics. .A senior government source said Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones are planning to make an announcement on expanding the number and range of surgeries performed in independent health facilities outside of hospitals. .The source said for Ontario patients, the move will lead to thousands more surgeries and diagnostic procedures performed each year, reducing wait times for operations such as cataract removals..Former Ontario Progressive Conservative candidate Ben Levitt said DiNovo knows she is lying. .“You’re deliberately trying to scare people,” said Levitt. .“The same people you pretend to care about, you’re choosing to lie to them and cause unnecessary chaos.”.Ontario Association of Radiologists President Dr. David Jacobs said the Ontario government is “proposing nothing of the sort.”.“Publicly funded private delivery of healthcare already includes doctors offices, imaging clinics, blood labs, and more across Canada,” said Jacobs. .“Please stop using fear and fabrications to attack expansion of access to care.”.Canadian patients waited longer than ever this year for medical treatment, according to a December 8 study done by the Fraser Institute. .READ MORE: Study finds Canada’s healthcare wait times hit longest ever recorded.“The results of this year’s survey indicate that COVID-19 and related hospital closures have exacerbated, but are not the cause, of Canada’s historic wait times challenges,” said Fraser Institute Centre for Health Policy Studies Director and study co-author Bacchus Barua. .The study, an annual survey of doctors across Canada, said the country has a median wait time of 27.4 weeks, longer than the wait of 25.6 weeks reported in 2021. It said this wait time is 195% higher than the 9.3 weeks recorded in 1993, when the Fraser Institute began tracking.
