Privatizing healthcare shift the major focus to profit-making; therefore, resulting in a periodic increment in the healthcare charges for patients. According to the Toronto Star, the Ontario healthcare system is being turned into a profit-driven system instead of healthcare service provision system (Chapman, 2014). This move creates the wrong solution to the healthcare miseries in Ontario and Canada as a whole. It makes prioritizes healthcare on the capability to pay rather than the healthcare need that will aggravate the “hallway medicine” and make the waiting periods even worse. These problems will create a loophole that will favor the wealthy patients.

Challenges in Sustainability

The healthcare system in Ontario has been getting strong support from the government until the move to privatize it. This poses a potential threat to its sustainability as the government support will be minimal. The healthcare system is, thus, to sustain itself through the profits it accrues. This means that it will it has to charge its patients more. High charges cut off a large percentage of Canadians as many of them will not be able to afford healthcare services. The revenue from the few people who can afford high healthcare charges will not be adequate to sustain the operations of the healthcare system (Bognar & Hirose, 2014). Unless other strategies are employed to charge less medical bills while maintaining the profits, there will be a challenge in sustainability for the private healthcare systems in the city.

The Canadian citizens finance public healthcare systems through payment of taxes and their incomes. This contributes to the spread of illness risk which in turn make the insurance affordable to the citizens. However, this insurance does not cater for private healthcare services. This factor leaves the private healthcare services unaffordable to most of the Canadian citizens. Unlike the Canadian healthcare system, the United States has adopted a universal healthcare system that is based on public and private insurance.

Reduction in the Control over the Private Operations

Privatization of healthcare in Ontario has not only minimized effective control of healthcare cost but also reduced control over its medical practices. This is due to various factors that occur as a result of privatization. Primarily, private healthcare is not eligible for public funding through taxes as it relies on the profits it makes. In addition, government regulations on medical practices mainly focus on public healthcare systems. These two factors make it difficult for effective government regulation on cost and healthcare service provision.

Increased Reliance on Public Healthcare System

            With the privatization of the healthcare system and its focus on wealth rather than need, the affordability of such healthcare services for most people becomes lower and lower. Most citizens are left with no choice other than to rely on the public healthcare system which is less costly and more affordable. Without the increase in the number of public health facilities and their healthcare providers, the reliance on their services makes more people crowd those facilities. This poses possible threats. One of the threats is an increase in the doctor-patient ratio which makes the healthcare providers overworked since they have to attend to the increasing number of patients. Another threat would be the increase in the wait time and long queues in public healthcare facilities. Some critical health conditions requiring urgent attendance may be greatly affected by the long wait times.

The shift in the healthcare workforce from the public to private health systems

Since the private healthcare system is focused on making profits, it is prospected to attract a number of healthcare providers due to better pay. The recruitment of these healthcare workers in the private sectors leads to deprivation of care providers in the public healthcare facilities. This causes an increment in the ratio of patient to healthcare provider leading to compromise in the quality of healthcare provided by the few care providers left in the public healthcare facilities.

References

Chapman, A. (2014). The impact of reliance on private sector health services on the right to health. Health Hum Rights, 16(1), 122-33.

Bognar, G., & Hirose, I. (2014). The ethics of health care rationing: an introduction. Routledge.