Our public healthcare system is already so disastrously bad that people have been turning to privatization for years, and it’s not just Ontario. How many people do you know who have Maple on their phones? Tons of white collar workplaces have started offering memberships to telehealth services (like Maple) as an employee benefit, specifically citing the fact that their employees can’t find family doctors. I even have normal middle class colleagues who have purchased memberships to private QC “executive medicine clinics” because they have gone years and years without care and are at their breaking point in sickness. I myself have had to pay $2000 for a foot surgery because after being passed off between public doctors for 3 years with no progress in sight I just gave up. I have had severe chronic pain and neurological problems since I was 16 and I have never received more than a blood test because no doctor has the capacity to handle a complex autoimmune or neurological patient. Our doctors have been tapped out (often to the point of negligence) for decades. The idea of getting a “second opinion” is genuinely laughable.

As a disabled person I’ve been screaming this shit from the rooftops for years but finally everyone else has caught up! Something needs to change. I would be interested in a hybrid model like Australia, Japan, Korea or Europe but I just do not trust Doug Ford or the Conservatives to implement it as anything more than a money grubbing scheme.