The provincial NDP wants the government to levy fines and penalties against private healthcare clinics that charge unfair fees.
The party’s health critic France Gélinas attempted to get legislation passed in the previous session only to see it voted down after Second Reading.
Gelinas says even the Auditor General has identified it being an issue that needs to be addressed.
“In her report, she says clearly that for-profit healthcare clinics often charge unfair fees to patients and request unnecessary tests for patients. Nothing good comes of that,” says Gelinas.
Some doctors’ groups also see the fees hurting patients.
Dr. Edward Xie, a board member with the Canadian Doctors for Medicare, Ontarians are seeing more doors open to U.S.-style privatization and for-profit clinics pulling doctors and nurses out of the public system.
He says the fees charges make healthcare inefficient, unaffordable and unfair.
‘They blur the lines between necessary care and expensive add-ons. They don’t improve care, but they do turn a profit on patients at a time of vulnerability,” says Dr. Xie.
Dr. Xie says the burden of identifying and reporting unfair, illegal fees is placed on patients and in most cases, investigations are only launched if a patient makes a complaint.
“There needs to be clarity for patients and accountability. The law is broken. It’s up to provincial governments to enforce this, and health professional groups need tools to ensure that our patients are protected from exploitation with unfair fees to patients.”
The Ontario Health Coalition has long lobbied against the fees charged at private clinics.
Executive Director Natalie Mehra points to the expansion of the clinics as the cause.
She says the Ford government’s promise that no one would pay for healthcare with their credit card is not holding true.
“He said that they would bring in guardrails that would protect patients against extra billing and user fees. Both of those things have not happened,” says Mehra.
“We have more complaints than we’ve ever had in the history of the Health Coalition about patients being charged extra user fees and being extra billed in private clinics almost exclusively.”
A 2017 Coalition study identified a majority of private clinics it contacted was charging patients extra user fees for cataract surgery that ballooned the costs two and three times what it costs.
