Doug Ford campaigned on being “Premier for the people,” including promising to listen to health-care providers and end hallway medicine.

“To all our great front-line health-care workers, the doctors, nurses, … help is on its way, but most importantly, we’re going to start listening,” he said.

As front-line health-care providers we urge the premier to follow the Hippocratic principle, “first, do no harm,” and to not intervene to stop the $15 per hour minimum wage and paid personal emergency leave days.

If Ford is interested in ending hallway medicine, he should support policies that prevent people from getting sick in the first place: a higher minimum wage, and paid personal emergency leave days for all Ontarians.

Low wages prevent people from accessing healthy food, safe shelter, and filling their prescriptions. According to a study by the Canadian Medical Association Journal, 1-in-10 Canadians can’t afford to fill or renew their prescriptions, and this rises to a third for low-income families. When patients can’t afford to preserve their health and take their medicine, they often end up in hospital.

Until this year, the situation was even worse for Ontarians without paid personal emergency leave days. The seemingly obvious medical advice to “stay home when you’re sick” is impossible for those who can’t afford to.

As the World Health Organization explained, “the absence of paid sick days forces ill workers to decide between caring for their health or losing jobs […] The absence or gaps of paid sick leave leads to important costs for the economy and avoidable expenditure within health care systems.”

As the Canadian Medical Association Journal elaborated, “it is in everyone’s interest to ensure that employees who are sick can stay at home: people with contagious diseases who go to work put their coworkers and clients at risk of infection, which can lead to increased general morbidity and productivity losses.”

As a study in the United States found, those with paid sick days are better able to see their primary health provider and less likely to make frequent visits to the emergency room.

As emergency doctors, we see how low wages and no paid sick days affect not just our patients, but also the health-care system. We have joined nearly 1,000 Ontario health providers calling for change, including seven paid sick days for full-time workers.

Last year’s Bill 148 provides 10 job-protected emergency leave days, the first two of which are paid. It also raised the minimum wage to $14 per hour, with a scheduled increase to $15 per hour in 2019. Health providers aren’t alone in supporting these changes: two-thirds of Canadians support a $15 per hour minimum wage.

But Ford has threatened to freeze the minimum wage and Conservative MPP Goldie Ghamari has tabled a petition to revoke the two paid personal emergency leave days for new employees. Like the recent cuts to social assistance these moves claim to save costs, but this is bad medicine.

Holding down wages does not reduce costs to our health-care system, it adds to them. Similarly, revoking paid personal emergency leave days does not immunize employees or their families against unexpected illness. On the contrary, it reduces access to preventive health care, increases the likelihood of contagion at work, and prevents workers from quickly recovering and returning to work.

We can either pay for sick days, or pay for it with sick workers, sick coworkers, sick clients, and more overcrowded hospitals.

Ford promised that help is on the way, and it is: in January the minimum wage is scheduled to increase to $15 per hour. When it comes to labour policy, all the premier has to do to start supporting the people and help end hallway medicine is … nothing. Let the minimum wage increase, and protect access to paid personal emergency leave days.

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Backtracking on legislation designed with input from health providers, public health experts, and economists will only hurt vulnerable Ontarians and our health-care system.

Premier Ford, you’ve promised to listen to health-care providers, so here is our ask from the trenches of the emergency department: First, do no harm.

Jesse McLaren and Kate Hayman are emergency physicians in Toronto. They are members of the Decent Work and Health Network.

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