Ombuds says he’d like to investigate government claims around health care sustainability

Now that Ontario Ombuds Andre Marin has been reappointed for another five year term, he has restarted his campaign to expand his powers to the MUSH sector – municipalities, universities, school boards and hospitals. Marin told the Toronto Star yesterday that the Premier and his health minster regularly paint “doomsday scenarios” of health care consuming 70 per cent of government spending within 12 years. Yet “we still have no investigative body that can number-crunch the performance independently of hospitals.” The Ombuds’ example is one that has raised much interest, particularly with the frequency in which the government uses this statistic. While presently out of the jurisdiction of the Ombuds’, on Thursday a group of economists are meeting with the Canadian Health Coalition in Ottawa to also discuss these claims. What is within the Ombuds’ jurisdiction are the Local Health Integration Networks, of which Marin will soon be issuing a report. The government must have some idea of what is in that report — the LHINs were given new guidelines earlier in the year around their spending practices.

To read more on these claims, see

https://opseudiablogue.wordpress.com/2010/03/26/bad-math-in-the-provincial-budget/