NDP leader urges Ontario government to ban fees for access to primary care

An Ottawa woman was charged $110 at an Appletree clinic to see a nurse practitioner for a routine Pap test.

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Published Mar 13, 2024 • Last updated 6 hours ago • 2 minute read

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles says the charging of fees for primary care in the province is “starting to get worse.” Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles says she shares the outrage of an Ottawa woman who was charged $110 at an Appletree clinic to see a nurse practitioner for a routine Pap test.

“The Doug Ford Conservatives like to say that you pay for health care with your OHIP card, not your credit card. That is not true. It is misleading. It is happening right now,” said Stiles, who has been in Ottawa to tour health centres and meet with health and housing experts.

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She said the Ontario government needed to act decisively and ban such practices.

A spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones said this week that the province would investigate the clinic near Carling and Woodroffe avenues after learning about the Ottawa woman’s experience.

Eileen Murphy said she registered with the clinic for a family doctor for herself and her husband after being without a doctor since 2022.

But, when she received notice from Ontario Health that she was due for a Pap test as part of its preventative cervical cancer screening program and tried to make an appointment, she learned her doctor, who she had never met, was now located in Dryden. She was told she could book an appointment with a nurse practitioner at the Ottawa clinic. When she got there, she was told the fee for the appointment was $97 plus tax for a total of $110.

Murphy was also told it would cost another $110 to return to discuss the test results.

On Wednesday, after an unrelated news conference, Stiles said the charging of such fees was “starting to get worse” across Ontario.

“We warned the government that this was going to happen when they opened the door to privatization of our health-care system, and it’s exactly what has happened,” Stiles said.

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Chandra Pasma, NDP MPP for Ottawa West Nepean, said the No. 1 issues she heard about in her office was how desperate people were to find primary care.

“These companies, these operators, are exploiting that desperation,” Pasma said. “And, by not taking action, the government is allowing that exploitation of desperate people to take place.”

Approximately 2.2 million Ontario residents are without primary caregivers, and that number is expected to close to double in the next few years.

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