Health Care Privatization Under Scrutiny Ahead of Provincial Elections

With health care services under scrutiny in New Brunswick, Liberal Leader Susan Holt says her party opposes further health care privatization.

It seems to indicate a change in policy for the Liberals, who generated controversy when they handed over certain health care services to Medavie Blue Cross under former premier Brian Gallant. Holt says she would also re-examine those contracts as part of her “refresh” of the party. 

She made the comments amid revelations about big spending on companies that provide temporary nursing services. 

Last month, the Globe and Mail reported that one of those companies, Canada Health Labs, charged fees amounting to roughly $300 per hour, “roughly six times what a nurse on staff at a hospital in Atlantic Canada typically earns.”  

New Brunswick’s Vitalité Health Network was that company’s biggest client for so-called travel nursing services. 

The leaders of the provincial Green and Liberal parties spoke out about the issue while holding consultations on health care across the province. 

In an interview with the NB Media Co-op, Holt said her party is “not in support” of healthcare privatization, and that healthcare privatization wouldn’t expand under a Liberal government.

In 2017, the government of Liberal Premier Brian Gallant handed over the management of extramural and Tele-Care services to Medavie Blue Cross. That company has also run the provincial ambulance service since 2007. Critics say Medavie Blue Cross lacks public accountability because it’s a private-sector entity. 

And while Medavie Blue Cross is officially a not-for-profit, Holt said it has a “for-profit arm,” and that a Liberal government would examine its contracts, “I’d want to look into those details to make sure that there isn’t a profit being extracted from the delivery of those services,” she said. 

Asked if her party has a credibility problem on the issue due to its track record on privatization, Holt suggested her leadership would turn over a new leaf, “I haven’t been a Liberal for a long time. And so I hope they’ll give us a chance to demonstrate the change and the refresh that I’m bringing to the party and the positions that we’re taking,” she said. 

At a public forum in Moncton, Green Party Leader David Coon warned that privatization has been “accelerating at an incredible rate” under successive Liberal and Conservative governments. Coon said nurses are leaving the public system and being recruited by private companies, which are then “putting them back in the hospitals or nursing homes at four times the cost.”

In an interview with the NB Media Co-op, Minister of Health Bruce Fitch defended the private delivery of services, noting, for example, that many doctors already operate as small private businesses. 

He rejected longstanding concerns from organized labour and other groups about the growing role of profit-hungry businesses in the health care system. 

Fitch pointed to a private, physician-operated surgical clinic in Bathurst that Vitalité Health Network says has “eliminated the list of patients waiting for more than one year.”

“The key is those procedures are being paid for by Medicare and it has impacted the system in a positive manner,” he said. 

But, as reported by the CBC, even the doctor who runs that clinic in Bathurst has warned about corporations focussed on profits gaining a bigger foothold in the health care system.

As for the question of private companies drawing health professionals away from the public system, Fitch said he recently met a nurse who planned to retire but took a job in the private sector instead.

“She said, ‘I was going to retire, I had had enough. But I’m going to [delay] my retirement and work here with the doctor, because it’s a nice way to prevent my retirement.’ So it’s also now providing an opportunity for people to extend their career,” Fitch said. 

As chronic issues continue in the overburdened healthcare system, Premier Blaine Higgs has stated that “all options are on the table,” including more privatization of services. It could be a significant issue in this year’s general election, scheduled to take place by Oct. 21.

David Gordon Koch is a journalist with the NB Media Co-op. This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Stations and Users (CACTUS).