PCs making secret moves to back private health care, Hepburn, Jan. 10

If Premier Doug Ford is working with Brian Day, a proponent for private, for-profit health care, that is very bad news for Ontario taxpayers.

Day has been working to install private, U.S.-style, for-profit, health care ever since he set up his clinics in Vancouver 20 years ago. When I went through his clinic for a procedure I couldn’t get at a hospital for five years, he increased the price three times — the last time when I was in the waiting room for the procedure itself.

He convinces governments he can do certain procedures so government doesn’t have to, giving them the illusion they are saving health care money.

But those procedures are only available at his clinic, for a price much higher than the government is willing to pay a hospital. That means the poorest citizens, seniors, disabled and those on welfare are not able to afford necessary procedures, or will have to mortgage their homes to pay for them — exactly like what is happening in the U.S.

If Ford is seeking to reduce hallway medicine this way, ensuring that the wealthy will always be able to pay but the poor will not, then he is not looking out for Ontario citizens.

This is the way to health-care privatization, not a fix to hallway medicine. In fact, it will guarantee our most vulnerable citizens will not be able to access health care at all.

M. Schooff, Chatham, Ont.

Once again, those who voted for populist politics to reflect the interests of the masses will discover the fraud perpetrated by Ford. On the surface, he appears to be just a casual everybody, an appealing ordinary person interested in representing ordinary voters. In fact, he is a game changer for the private sector, whose elitist agenda is to extract private profit from public institutions — in this case, our health care.

Most Ontarians are not disgruntled with our health care. Longevity has increased here while, in the U.S., longevity has decreased by three years. Their experience is proof that privatization and its economic efficiencies have not solved the problem of providing health care to a nation.

When we discover that an elected leader intends to make major changes that most citizens don’t want or elected him to make, then it’s reasonable to question what’s going on.

When a hidden agenda is revealed to be at work, then the political opposition needs to rise up and declare its objections and options.

Tony D’Andrea, Toronto

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