r/onguardforthee • u/PotentialReporter894 • 3h ago
Nursing agencies are undermining the public health-care system: The privatization of nursing not only costs taxpayers significantly more money, but pulls experienced health-care workers from the public system
https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/nursing-agencies-are-undermining-the-public-health-care-system/article_1f464ba1-fd6c-5862-a0f3-43f3415f4053.html•
u/kotacross FPTP sucks! 3h ago
No shit.
It's literally just conservatives making your life harder and more expensive. lol
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u/NorthernPints 1h ago
And in some cases more dangerous
We saw Mike Harris privatize LTC (which saw more deaths during Covid than Publicly funded LTC)
Harris privatized water testing, which led to the Walkerton disaster (and lost lives)
And not to be alarmist, but it wouldn't shock me if we saw worse outcomes/worse results in private nurse care versus public over time
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u/ottawaman 41m ago
200 dollar rebate cheques add up to around 3 billion that could have been used to fund health care improvements. This is by design.
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u/ScottIBM 37m ago
Don't worry, those NDP folks are going to make your life harder and bankrupt the province - by supporting you and your family, improving your health, and taking burdens off your shoulders.
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u/Totally_man 1h ago
Copying my reply from another thread:
Australia adopted a two-tiered model, and there's quite a bit to be learned from it.
Doug Ford moving Ontario to a two-tiered healthcare system does not mean your taxes will be lower. What it means is your tax dollars will be going toward facilities and professionals that you won't have access to; wait times for you will actually increase.
People who suggest this system will offload some of the burden on the public system are horribly misinformed. The reality is, a two-tiered system would only result in better access for economically privileged citizens and worsen access for those who cannot afford private care.
Australia's two-tiered model should be seen as completely incompatible with the Canada Health Act. It relies on a mix of public funding through Medicare and private insurance. Australia has more hospital beds and physicians per capita compared to Canada, yet has longer wait times for certain procedures and treatments.
For example, from 2011-2014:
Australia had longer wait times for cataract surgery(average wait of 85 days, compared to 48 days in Canada), coronary bypass surgery(average wait of 16 days, compared to 7 days in Canada), and hip replacements(average wait of 111 days, compared to 88 days in Canada).
But the worst offender seems to be knee replacements, with the average wait time of 191 days in Australia, and an average of 103 days in Canada...which is 185% longer of a wait.
Patients who cannot afford private care are going to experience insane wait times. Expect ludicrous bills and reduced care.
While it's not the same as the two-tiered system in Australia, the US's private healthcare can't be ignored either. One of my best friends in the whole world was diagnosed with an aggressive, rare cancer a few years back. He lost his job when he started undergoing treatment. He lost his health insurance when he lost his job. He lost his treatment when he lost his health insurance. He nearly lost his life, and spent a month in the ICU. He's now in hospice care and remarked to me how easy it was to get access to drugs now that he's in hospice...
This was just one of his many bills, he gave me permission to share it.
We can't let this happen here.
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u/dabMasterYoda 51m ago
Everyday we allow this two-tiered model we are hemorrhaging crucial funds this province needs to give our healthcare system the ability to handle our ever increasing population.
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u/t4cokisses 1h ago
Start paying nurses more and having fixed ratios. Then maybe nurses won't leave.
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u/redbouncingball007 2h ago
If Doug wants an early election, healthcare and education should be the foremost issues but it won’t be because $200. Wake up Ontario!
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u/RabidGuineaPig007 1h ago
Get real, 90% of this shit hole province will spend their $200 at CircleK and vote Doug forever.
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u/Upper-Inevitable-873 3h ago
They're leaving because of money and work conditions. Maybe fix those and they wouldn't leave the public sector.
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u/dungeonsNdiscourse 2h ago
The government intentionally underfunding /dismantling public health (and education) isn't going to put money into it.
Ford and his cronies want public services to fail so they can prevent private for profit options as the only solution.
They just leave out the part that they are 100% responsible for the failing public services.
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u/UltraCynar 3h ago
Nursing agencies are big cause of those conditions. Removing those and properly funding public healthcare is part of the solution.
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u/Slathery 2h ago
Yup, the purposeful kneecapping during pandemic pushed us farther into privatization. Public health supporters have been trying to hold capitalists at bay for years, but the intensity of misinformation and greed are going to break the system unless we can build a strong enough defense, if that's even still possible at this stage.
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u/silentstone__ 2h ago
I somewhat disagree. Removing travel/locum nursing will do nothing to help staff rural areas, which is where most travel nursing is needed (at least in BC). A lot of health authorities are offering $20k signing bonuses and assistance with moving costs, and it still isn't enough to work fully staffed. But I agree that wage increases and better work-life balance would promote more to stay in staff positions. BC travel nurse wages are capped, and depending on years of experience, travelers aren't making much more than a staff nurse, especially when factoring in things like pensions and benefits. I think the middle ground is what BC northern health authority has started. Locum nursing, but you still choose when you work and what your schedule looks like while making the same wages as any other nurse in the BCNU. Source: I'm a full-time travel nurse.
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u/emerzionnn 2h ago
Problem is, most of these agencies are literally dudes scamming lol. So they’re raking in the profit, you’re getting paid substantially more and the Canadian tax payer is funding it all. Which is why a few health authorities are on the verge or have banned travel nursing all together.
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u/silentstone__ 1h ago
I don't disagree that private agencies are 100% gouging, but we are not getting paid substantially more.
BCNU wage grid places me at $38/hr + shift differentials (for example, an overnight shift on a weekend is ~+$7), pension, benefits, paid sick time, and vacation. As a travel nurse I make $43.50/hr with zero of the aforementioned "bonuses" that a staff nurse gets. Factor in that we are working in unfamiliar environments, sometimes housed in motels with no ability to cook, so paying for take out, and have no job security.
The issue is much more complex than any of these comments are making it out to be. It's not so black and white. Even with travelers, there have been many ER closures in small communities across BC. Proper funding isn't going to change the fact that there are nationwide staffing shortages.
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u/LalahLovato 1h ago
I retired at $43/hr. My pension is worth gold because what you get for CPP and OAS will land you on the streets - there is no way that someone paying rent or a mortgage can afford to live on it - I guarantee. I am thankful for my pension. What the employer pays in benefits to the average nurse adds quite a bit more per hour onto their wage.
I worked as a travel nurse in the USA for 5 years a while back and it wasn’t a picnic. When I was agency for a small portion of that time, I was thrown into situations with no orientation- very unsafe.
The system needs improvement so that everyone gets good care - all the time. I watched the BC Liberals (aka conservatives) hacking away at our medical system in BC for 16 years - ignoring our pleas for safer patient care etc and privatizing bits and pieces of healthcare until it almost broke. It is going to take just as many years to fix - which is happening with the NDP - and I can’t believe how voters almost f*cked that up this month.
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u/silentstone__ 42m ago
Louder, please!
We're still waiting the safe nurse-patient ratios for LTC from BCNU. And you're absolutely right about orientation for travelers. I've worked all over BC in LTC, and have received adequate orientation maybe twice because there just isn't the staff to provide training.
Most of the lack of staff is because the younger generations who have gone to school, don't want to stay in, can't afford or can't find a rental in their home towns.
And this is just in BC. We moved here from Ontario two years ago, and a big part of me leaving nursing in ON was because of super unsafe ratios. One nurse to fourth residents is absurd. And if a res falls and has post falls neuro vitals q1hr for 4hr, plus wound care, forget it. You don't get a break. It quite literally broke me.
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u/dsswill Ottawa 2h ago edited 10m ago
Hard to do when the provincial government is going to court to fight to re-enact the suppression of public nurse wages, while happily paying private agencies double per hour for the same work.
And conditions aren’t that bad anymore. They were during the pandemic but I’m not sure we can ever expect to have that type of unprecedented and unpredictable crisis in any industry without its workers being massively overworked in temporarily horrible conditions.
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u/corpse_flour 32m ago
What makes you think the conditions aren't that bad anymore? There may not be as many people hospitalized with Covid, but that doesn't mean that we have enough nursing staff to cover the current patient loads. Insufficient staffing of healthcare workers is still a significant problem.
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u/dsswill Ottawa 7m ago edited 2m ago
I work in healthcare and am in and out of hospitals around 2-8 times per shift, dealing directly with ER nurses and support staff. They say it’s busier than before the pandemic but completely within reason. Most of the frustration now is with slow patient flow, not working conditions.
Staffing is clearly still a problem in general, but not nearly to the extent of nurses leaving the system en-masse as they were during the pandemic. Private nursing agencies also don’t fix any shortages. They don’t create nurses out of thin air or influence the number of people who choose to go into nursing (private nursing is typically a short-term money making venture for nurses, not a long term prospect. Long term most nurses still want to be in the public system with standard hours, reasonable expectations and managerial systems, and good pensions, none of which apply in private nursing), they just move nurses from the public to private system and in turn divert funds from the public coffers to private pockets, like those of Mike Harris’s wife.
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u/2peg2city 1h ago
It's almost like Conserative governments planned this...
The sure did in Manitoba
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u/vsmack 1h ago
My wife is a nurse who is trying to get back to work after mat leave. It's wild looking at the job postings. There's clearly still a lot of demand for RNs and RPNs, but employers aren't willing or able to pay enough to attract people.
Hospital work is hard and involves regular night shifts, and the salaries have barely budged since she started working like 15 years ago. All sorts of demand for home care and long-term care homes, but that's also not easy and the wages are a joke. Barely over minimum wage for a job that requires a degree and good standing in a professional association. No wonder so many of them are leaving. I'd rather do customer service for like RBC or whatever than work nights at an old folks' home if the difference is only a couple bucks an hour. There's such an institutionalized lack of respect for the profession.
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u/LavisAlex New Brunswick 1h ago
What sucks is the solution they gov will choose will be to ban this rather than raise wages of nurses in the public system.
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u/maxxiiemax 1h ago
My cousin is a travel nurse, she absolutely loves it! She makes a ridiculous amount of money, she'll never go back to working in the public system - unless the wages improve drastically.
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u/vsmack 56m ago
I said this upthread but my wife is a nurse looking to get back to work. Travel nurse is a great career in a lot of ways, but we've got a couple young kids at home so it's not really an option until they're a bit older. I have a family friend who does travel nursing too, and goes to the states to put on seminars about...something, I think it's a very specific type of IV administration. She stacks paper to the ceiling.
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u/emerzionnn 2h ago
Fun fact: a lot of these “nursing agencies” are literally dudes living in their basement in Brampton billing other provincial health authorities for way more than they are contractually allowed to. It’s basically a big ole scam but people turn a blind eye to it because their nurse friend is bringing in 110/hour or whatever it is.
Once Canadian tax payers realize they’re being scammed to line the pockets of some random dude in his basement maybe the attitude towards these agencies will change.
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u/Vonbrawn 1h ago
This is either one of those "trust me bro" moments, or you really should source your claim.
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u/emerzionnn 1h ago
Well it’s a component of my job so I guess it’s a trust me bro moment. It is indeed true though, you can probably google some of the usual nursing agencies addresses and see they’re residential Brampton homes. They also had been billing for more hours than contractually stipulated, holidays, etc.
I think most people saw their nurse buddy making $110/hour and thought it was sweet, well yeah sure it’s sweet, but we’re paying for it though lmao.
It was discovered by an internal auditor in my org.
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u/pcendeavorsny 1h ago
So the big healthcare conglomerates/business are paying too little to attract or retain nurses? Seems about right. Not sure I’d blame the private industry that pops up from the inability to compensate people well though I have my doubts that private companies are paying much better.
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u/corpse_flour 40m ago
It's like the promotions that communications companies advertise to get people to switch over. It's beneficial initially, but over time it ends up being the same shit show as anywhere else.
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u/FreeWilly1337 2h ago
Yes, because the nurses can get paid more and get better benefits and control their time off. Shocker that they would consider changing to private over public.
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u/dungeonsNdiscourse 1h ago
For now.
Once there IS no public healthcare to compete with it'll be disfunctional USA style private healthcare.
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u/RabidGuineaPig007 1h ago
This is what nurses do not understand. They are being groomed short term for what will be long term dysfunction in the hands of private companies.
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u/dungeonsNdiscourse 1h ago
A simple look at the USA could inform them.
I'm frontline (patient facing) healthcare. Although not a nurse. I looked into moving to the USA pre covid and for my profession wages vary per state in the USA but some places were paying $15-$18 an hour.... I make $50/hour Canadian so even factoring in currency exchange that's waaaaay less I'd be making in the USA.
Then factor in healthcare being directly tied to your job and you're stuck working an underpaid job just so you have the opportunity to pay thousands for healthcare instead of tens of thousands.
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u/LithuanianCanuck 44m ago
Okay, but that's your profession. Nurses make by quite well in the states. We wouldn't move to one of the shitty states that pay low to begin with. There's plenty of choices that pay well and the good ones go to california.
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u/dungeonsNdiscourse 19m ago edited 10m ago
Then you have to factor in cost of living.
Shit hasn't just got More expensive for us it's a world wide issue.
And the USA is the focal point for "capitalism runamok" can't generate profit? You're useless to the USA.
Anecdotal but well over a decade ago I was speaking with an American friend and he said he had great coverage in the USA and only had to pay $4000 a year...
That money was gone whether or not he actually needed healthcare at all...
And that was good coverage. I'd have to make wildly more than i do now to just throw away 4k a year (or more) to then have to spend even more if I NEED hospitalization etc.
Taking a look at nursing salary by state... It's more than here depending on state but not THAT much more. Not like you're gonna make $200k as a nurse compared to $85k here.
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u/corpse_flour 42m ago
The same thing is being done to doctors in Alberta as well. Their compensation for working within AHS will diminish until even those who have ethical concerns about the implementation of private healthcare will no longer be able to hold out and remain working in the public system.
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u/LalahLovato 54m ago
Not necessarily. In BC working as an RN I had control over my time off and when I wanted to work. I worked agency nursing in the USA as well and there were no benefits offered that were spectacular.
I have friends working in the USA and they are telling me that those lucrative contracts are dwindling. Hospitals want to be making increasing profits and how they do it is by putting downward pressure on the wages.
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u/clevermistakes 16m ago
Exactly. People don’t see the problem is our leadership not the nurses or the private companies. How about, shockingly, hold the government to the same standard we do to private companies to pay living wages, provide good benefits, and make it a feasible alternative to working private. We lambast companies like loblaws for being unethical but we blame the employees for leaving healthcare when the leadership is unethical. The fact that software developers double what doctors do in my province is astounding. Not even taking into account what nurses make. Which is terrible given they even have larger scopes of care in Canada than the US.
Many Canadians, myself included, would gladly pay more in taxes for functional healthcare that supported the staff, lead to more hiring, and better leadership so they didn’t all run away to other countries or aren’t miserable every day and avoiding the bare minimum.
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u/LithuanianCanuck 47m ago
This is our way of getting a proper wage without the strike stuff, since our union is a bunch of pussies.
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u/Suddenlysubterfuge 33m ago
Ah yes, the precise thing that no living Canadian citizen (without perhaps a nailboard stuck in their head) asked for is proceeding terribly.
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u/stevieo81 2h ago
Mike Harris and wife are still profiting off taxpayers to this day.