Drummond to suggest deep cuts in public services

Former bank chief Don Drummond heads a commission that will recommend massive cuts in government spending in Ontario.

Thomas Walkom, Opinion, The Toronto Star:

Don Drummond, the Ontario government’s adviser-on-everything, is still a few days away from officially revealing details of his proposed spending cutbacks. But critics are already weighing in.

Chief among these are the health care unions, who suspect from Drummond’s musings that the former bank economist will propose sweeping measures designed to make Ontario’s non-profit hospitals operate more like profit-maximizing private corporations.

The unions obviously have a monetary interest in this. Private corporations are under tremendous shareholder pressure to reduce costs by whatever means — including the contracting out of good jobs to cheaper, non-union shops.

But the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, which bargains for 30,000 hospital, long-term care and ambulance workers, also argues that the kinds of free-market measures Drummond has been hinting at won’t save money for taxpayers.

The union analysis rests to a large extent on research done in the U.S. and Britain, where private corporations are far more involved in the delivery of publicly funded health services than in Canada.

Governments interested in reducing health-care costs shouldn’t rely on free-market reforms to do the trick. Health care isn’t a commodity like, say, soap where the normal laws of supply and demand operate.

It is a human necessity where one side — the provider — has all the information and power, while the other — the patient — is far too often acting out of desperation.

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