MEDIA ADVISORY - Protests Against Ford Government’s Expanding Hospital Privatization Plans

TORONTO, Sept. 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- “The Ford government is privatizing our public hospitals in a move that is costing patients thousands of dollars and taking away from our local public hospital services. Everyone’s help is needed to pressure them to stop it.” That is the message brought by Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, a network of patient advocates and public interest groups representing three quarters of a million Ontarians and more than 500 organizations concerned about protecting and improving public health care.

She went on to warn, the threat is very real: “When they privatized thousands of cataract surgeries, Doug Ford did a pre-emptive round of media promising that people would never pay with their credit card, only their OHIP card. He swore our health services would remain “100% covered”. That is untrue. Patients are now routinely charged thousands of dollars in private for-profit eye surgery clinics. Instead of stopping it, the Ford government is actually expanding its privatization.”

In response, protests across Ontario are planned as follows:

Last spring, the Coalition made a formal complaint to the Ford government with details and proof of payment from 50 patients who had been charged illegally and unethically in private clinics. The Ford government has not required the reimbursement of the patients, nor stopped the clinics. In fact, there is no apparent progress on the investigation. Some examples of recent patient experiences:

• An 80-year old woman was told she had to make a down payment of $1,500 followed by almost $11,000 for her eye surgery in Ottawa.
• A 71-year old man had to come out of retirement to work to pay for his cataract surgery.
• An 85-year old widow, whose eyesight was failing, was charged almost $7,000 for her eye surgery. She had to take out a loan that she is struggling to pay back.
  
  

The Coalition warns that the Ford government plans to expand their hospital privatization to orthopedic surgeries – hips, knees, shoulders -- as well as MRIs, CTs and other diagnostics and surgeries: “The hardship caused by these user charges in the private clinics is exactly what the Canada Health Act and Ontario’s Public Medicare laws were set up to prohibit,” said Ms. Mehra. “We have held press conferences with patients who have been extra-billed, written letters, asked for meetings with the Minister and Premier. They know this is happening but unless public pressure gets strong enough, they are not only failing to stop it, they are going to expand it.”

There is an alternative. All across Ontario local hospitals have operating rooms that are closed the majority of the time because they don’t have the funds to staff up and run them. Instead of funding them, Ford is shifting more than a billion dollars a year to private clinics and for-profit staffing corporations. Privatization is not about improving wait times and health care, the Coalition notes. It is about giving government contracts to for-profit interests.

For more information: Natalie Mehra, executive director (416) 230-6402 (cell).

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