QUEEN’S PARK — MPP Peggy Sattler asks the government why it is pushing for two-tiered private health care rather than investing in our pubic health care system.
"Speaker, this government may think that privatization is the answer, but Londoners disagree," said Sattler. "Like many Londoners, a constituent told me that she and her husband have been unable to find a new family doctor. After being turned away from overwhelmed walk-in clinics, they felt they had no other option than to pay to join a private medical service in order to access basic medical care. They have the means to pay but feel that this is fundamentally wrong.
Why is this government more interested in promoting privatized two-tier health care than in making the urgent investments that our public health care system and our exhausted health care workers so desperately need?"
Sattler pressed further on the issue regarding the lack of action from the government on our public health care crisis: "Chris Hodgins lives in London West and had to take his 84-year-old mother to University Hospital ER for severe hip pain. She waited 16½ hours before being seen and then waited two hours more in the treatment room. Another patient with acute appendicitis waited five hours longer than Chris’s mother.
Speaker, how many hours will Londoners have to wait before this government finally acknowledges that our health care system is in crisis? Or does the entire ER have to shut down?"