On the road to health care privatization

The 2023-2024 budget for the New Brunswick Department of Health is $3.6 billion. This represents one-third of this year’s provincial budget. The Department of Health is responsible for providing health care to more than 800,000 New Brunswickers, and delivering services and programs throughout the province. Health services are also one of the main priorities of the population. 

The New Brunswick Health Coalition has been concerned for years about the trend of both Liberal and Conservative governments to privatize the management of health services. On May 1, 2023, on International Workers’ Day, the Coalition released a report entitled The Road to Privatization of Health Care in New Brunswick. We encourage you to read the full report by clicking on its title. 

Here are its main conclusions: 

• More and more public health services are now being run by private companies.
• The government is not doing its due diligence when negotiating agreements with private companies.
• The government has very little control over the services it privatizes and does little to ensure that companies comply with the agreements they signed.
• Private companies do not provide the correct information and therefore receive money that they should not get.
• Private companies do not provide the products or services they have agreed to provide. 
• Confidential health information is now in the hands of for-profit companies and we don’t know how it will be used.
• Employees of the private companies that manage our public health care services are more interested in meeting the financial goals of their employers than in providing quality services to the citizens of New Brunswick.

We must also keep in mind that every dollar the government invests in the private sector is a dollar less for the public sector, which results in the gradual erosion of our public health care system.

The New Brunswick Health Coalition is most concerned about the growing influence of private companies in shaping government policies within our health care system. Where does the road to privatization lead us?

Bernadette Landry is co-chair of the New Brunswick Health Coalition.