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It’s unclear why we need this new centralized agency, given that we have a ministry of health.

The opposition NDP has already begun casting the document as an evil plot to introduce more private health care, though there’s little in the draft legislation to indicate this is the government’s agenda. The bill is mostly about rearranging the furniture: creating a big agency instead of smaller, regional ones; designating groups or entities as “Integrated care” if they deliver more than one type of health service; overseeing the patient ombudsman, etc.

It’s unclear why we need this new centralized agency, given that the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care exists.But that will not be the argument the public will hear over the next several months. Instead, we’ll be berated by a constant drone of accusations over “private” medicine.

Politicians of all stripes could do Ontarians a big favour by calmly explaining how health care operates now. Your family doctor, for instance, likely works in a sort of contracting-out setup: he or she is a private corporation paid by government to deliver care. Your dentist is a completely private businessperson; so is any physiotherapist not employed at a hospital. The drugs you pick up at your local pharmacy are private sector, not public. In fact, 30 per cent of health care in Canada is privately paid.

That doesn’t make it good or bad: it’s just reality. On health care, most Ontarians would probably opt for any setup that worked well. Instead, we’ll have one side shrieking about privatization while the other focuses on dissolving those LHINs you’ve never heard of. No wonder health care is ailing.

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