MEDIA RELEASE: Dangers of privatizing our health care system

DARTMOUTH – This week’s government announcement of a publicly funded, privately provided mental health and addictions care plan is a dangerous direction for Nova Scotia to be headed in.

“Outsourcing mental health and addictions work to an as-yet unnamed private company will accomplish nothing except draining desperately needed resources from our public system and handing them over to a for-profit company,” said NSGEU President Sandra Mullen.

These types of private contracts generally pay higher salaries than government is willing to offer their own staff within the public sector, which all but guarantees an exodus of workers from our public system. Furthermore, this private entity – much like private surgical clinics who perform orthopedic and cataract surgeries – will only receive the least complex cases, leaving the staff who remain in the public system to struggle to support Nova Scotians with far more complex mental health and addictions issues.

As a consequence, the public system will lose significant capacity to deliver services, which essentially ensures the private entity will be extremely well-positioned to continue receiving contracts and public funding to deliver this service – and perhaps more.

We all know how well lucrative travel nursing contracts have served Nova Scotians – well actually, we only know approximate numbers, as these private contracts are not subject to FOIPOP, and the full details of costing are kept secret. But we do know that agency nurses are paid at least double the hourly wage of staff nurses, plus enormous fees to the agency itself, as well as travel and accommodation.

“The Premier has acknowledged that costs have spiraled out of control with travel nursing and government is attempting to rein in the practice: why should we expect a different outcome with privatizing mental health and addictions? Or any other aspect of the health care system?” adds Mullen.

Nova Scotia’s health care system needs help, and that does not entail contracts being handed out to private interests that will actively siphon staff away from the public system. Instead, the Minister and Premier need to “ramp up” their efforts to actually strengthen our capacity in the public sector, not abdicate responsibility to Telus or Maple, or turn a blind eye when another private MRI clinic pops up.

“We’ve already seen where the slippery slope of travel nursing can lead us. I strongly urge the Premier to step back from the edge,” said Mullen.

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The Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union represents nearly 38,000 workers who provide quality public services Nova Scotians count on every day.

For more information, or to arrange an interview with NSGEU President Sandra Mullen, please contact:

Holly Fraughton, NSGEU Communications Officer, 902-471-1781, hfraughton@nsgeu.ca