By Petre Marin
December 5, 2008

This past Thursday, December 4, the Hamilton branch of the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) held a town hall meeting at the United Steelworkers hall to inform the public of a wave of health care cuts planned by the provincial government. About 80 people filled the hall. Among them were health care and steel workers, union representatives, senior citizens, and various community groups. I attended the meeting on behalf of Common Cause Hamilton. The following is a brief report highlighting the main points that were made on the night.

First, it is clear that we are facing a round of cuts to health care not seen since the Mike Harris era. The Ontario Health Coalition, a group made up of unions and community organizations, presented a report outlining the major “restructuring” to the health care system currently underway or planned for next year. As Natalie Mehra, the coalition director put it, “We are seeing the deepest and most widespread hospital cuts in more than a decade.” The provincial government is creating a pretext for the cuts by creating what one speaker referred to as “fake deficits.” The rate of funding has been set at less than the rate of inflation meaning that hospitals cannot maintain the same level of services year to year without going into deficit. Already 50% of hospitals in the province are in deficit and the number is expected to jump to 70% next year, according to the OHC.

In addition to spending cuts, the restructuring aims to force hospitals to specialize in a narrow range of services thus reducing the number of “general” hospitals and thus also centralizing health care services further. Small and rural hospitals are especially threatened under these plans. The direct impact on patients will be longer travel time to access health care services, including emergency services. As one local doctor put it, the result could be a “traveling organ show” where patients are forced to travel from hospital to hospital in order to access services which would otherwise have been available in one hospital.

As usual, the government has decided that this latest round of “restructuring” will be done on the backs of health care workers and patients. Already 175 jobs have been cut at St. Joseph's Healthcare in Hamilton where management is also considering a wage freeze. 300 jobs were recently cut at Hamilton Health Sciences. There are plans to cut more jobs and eliminate emergency rooms, maternity wards, mental health beds and other services across the Hamilton-Niagara region. As described by several local health care workers, all of this is further increasing their already unsustainable workload reducing the quality of health care available to patients.

After hearing the testimonies given by these workers it is not an exaggeration to say that the government is putting patients lives at risk by pursuing reduced spending over quality health care. Those at the meeting heard of patients being rushed in and out of the system due to a lack of nurses, and patients being placed in unsafe areas due to a lack of beds. When nurses complain, they are told by management not to use the word “unsafe” and nothing is done.

In one local hospital building, the janitorial services have been outsourced to a private company. According to the union president, the company makes sure the bottom two floors, those available to the public, are kept well clean. Meanwhile, in order to save costs, the top eight floors, inaccessible to the public, are in his words “filthy.” The nurses there have started referring to the top floors are “dust bowl alley.” These testimonies are shocking coming in the wake of hundreds of patients dying in Ontario hospitals due to c.difficile and other infectious diseases.

A major theme that emerged from the town hall meeting was the lack of democracy in the health care system. The restructuring is being carried out by Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs). These are made up of people appointed by the provincial cabinet, not elected members of the community. LHINs have the mandate to cut services when hospitals in their areas go into deficit. They often operate under a veil of secrecy and are accountable only to the provincial cabinet who is now pressuring them to reduce spending. Health care workers, patients and other community members who have a direct stake in our health care system are left on the outside. When health care workers do speak out, they place their jobs and careers at risk.

Needless to say we are a long way from the kind of worker and community-run health care system that anarchists would like to see. But listening to last night's town hall meeting it was encouraging to see that so many people identified a lack of community control over the health care system as a root cause of our problems. It also seemed clear that the community is ready to mobilize against the planned cuts. The local branch of the OHC and the local health care workers' unions will be spearheading the resistance along side various community groups. A plan of action will be developed over the course of the next few weeks. There was also talk of developing an alternative restructuring plan based on community needs to counter the government's plan.

There is every chance that this will be the main struggle of our community over the next few years. The OHC, the health care sector unions and the community organizations involved, particularly senior citizens' groups, make for a formidable force, one that has a history of successful resistance going back to the Mike Harris era. Public support is also likely to be strong. Rallies against hospital closings and other cuts regularly attract thousands of people in Hamilton.

In my opinion anarchists and other anti-authoritarians should take this opportunity to struggle side by side with our fellow workers and neighbours on an issue that is so important to so many of us. We can join the efforts currently underway to educate and mobilize our community. We also have an opportunity to present anarchist ideas such as worker and community-run social services that are likely to get a friendly reception.

For more information see the Ontario Health Coalition's website: http://www.web.net/~ohc/ [1]

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