NDP MPPs introduce Bill to stop illegal health care fees

QUEEN’S PARK – The NDP is keeping up its campaign to protect Ontario’s healthcare with the introduction of a bill from Shadow Minister of Health France Gélinas, Ottawa West-Nepean MPP, Chandra Pasma, and Hamilton Centre MPP, Dr. Robin Lennox. If passed, The Health Care is Not for Sale Act would stop unfair and illegal health care fees.

The Ontario Health Coalition, Canadian Doctors for Medicare, Canadian Medical Association Journal and the Auditor General of Ontario have all found and reported that for-profit health care clinics often charge unfair fees and request unnecessary tests for patients.

“User fees for medically-necessary services make health care inefficient, unaffordable, and unfair,” said Dr. Edward Xie, a Director of Canadian Doctors for Medicare. "Not only do they go against scientific evidence and our values, but they’re also illegal."

The NDP proposed legislation will ensure that there are consequences imposed on for-profit facilities who charge Ontarians unfair fees. The Act would officially recognize this predatory practice as professional misconduct, empowering regulatory colleges to issue fines and suspend licenses. For-profit clinics found to be charging patients unfair fees would be compelled to reimburse patients and could lose their license.

“No senior should have to be thinking about going back to work or taking out a loan to cover health care in Ontario,” said MPP Pasma. “For-profit healthcare providers who take financial advantage of patients or provide misleading information to upsell them should face consequences.” While for-profit healthcare providers are the ones directly harming patients, this misconduct has been made possible by the government-led changes that Americanised our public healthcare system.

"The government opened the floodgates to user fees for patients in its private for-profit clinics," reported Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition. "We welcome this Private Member's Bill in the hopes that it would inject some accountability into this." Despite these blatant misuses of the Canadian medical system, the government has done little to address issues with the regulatory framework, voting against a previous iteration of this bill.

"The government promised that patients would never have to pay with their credit card,” said Mehra. “Why is nothing happening to the private clinic owners who are charging elderly patients thousands of dollars?" The NDP has frequently called on the government to end its push to Americanise Ontario’s health care and invest in Ontario public hospitals instead.

"Healthcare is about providing essential care to patients in their time of need, not profiteering,” said MPP Lennox. We must oppose practices that unfairly charge patients for accessing health services, and we must ensure that our publicly-funded healthcare system is adequately resourced to meet the needs of our communities"

“With a crisis in our hospitals, the government can help address the staffing crisis in health care by keeping health professionals in the public system rather than moving them to private, for-profit clinics. “In addition to cracking down on unfair patient fees, we need to invest in bringing more nurses into our hospitals, improving the quality of care, and keeping wait times short.” said Gélinas. “Canadians and Ontarians agree that we need to protect Ontario. To do that, we need to stop the government from adopting an American-style system with private, for-profit providers.”

“The way to improve our public health care system is to invest in it, not undercut and americanize it.” Added Gélinas. “By protecting healthcare workers, patients, and properly supporting public healthcare, we can protect Canada’s healthcare system.”