Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott is accusing NDP Leader Andrea Horwath of “crying wolf” following the leak of a confidential draft bill that would establish a health care “super agency” to create “efficiencies” in the system and empower the Ford government to privatize more services.“This is a very early draft of legislation,” Elliott said Thursday. “It’s not been finalized.”The new “super agency” to oversee health care was first revealed by the Star on Jan. 17, with sources saying the intent is to improve services for patients by streamlining and integrating the vast system, and putting agencies such as Cancer Care Ontario under one layer of control.“If there was any doubt that this government is committed to massive privatization in health care that doubt vanishes with this bill,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said after her staff released a draft copy of the Health System Efficiency Act, 2019, obtained Wednesday evening. Elliott acknowledged the health system needs “transformative change” and said “the status quo is not acceptable,” pointing to the 32,000 Ontarians on waiting lists for long-term care beds and the more than 1,000 patients being treated in hallways daily because of hospital overcrowding.“We will have more to say about our transformational strategy in due course,” she told reporters, saying “the health system was built for bureaucracy, not for patients.”Elliott would not reveal whether the plan will lead to more privatized delivery of health-care services, but said “what people receive now is through OHIP and that will continue.”The bill is marked “confidential” and contains notes from staff involved in writing it. There is no specific date on the document. Horwath said the legislation makes a “sham” of Ford health-care czar Dr. Rueben Devlin’s consultations with ...
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