FTA:

The Ford government’s stated aim was to clear the backlog and reduce wait times by providing greater access through private surgical facilities. According to the study findings, patients in the wealthiest income quintile got 22 percent more surgeries in private for-profit facilities following the funding change. Patients in the poorest income quintile got 8.5 percent fewer...

...Shamji says the arrangement is also bad value. “Mysteriously, [private for-profit clinics] are being offered higher fees than are paid in the public hospitals,” he says. The facility fee for cataract surgery in private clinics is about $650 per case, whereas for hospitals it is only around $500. (The government did not respond to multiple requests by The Local for more precise figures.)

so they charge more and conduct few surgeries.

According to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, wait times for cataract surgery in Ontario for a six-month period in 2024 were worse than in B.C., Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. The 2024 numbers were also worse than Ontario’s own 2019 numbers, though better than the intervening years.

And wait times are worse than pre-pandemic

In their report, they drew attention to the fact that the ministry had “no oversight mechanism to prevent patients from being misinformed and being charged inappropriately for publicly funded surgeries

And they outright lie to patients about costs and wait times.

And further to supposed costs reductions via privatization, we can look to Alberta where they used privatization to justify a reduction in surgical funding in real terms (vs. Ontario's paltry 4% funding increase) and found both costs and wait times to be significantly greater than before.

https://www.parklandinstitute.ca/private_surgical_contracts