NDP health critic France Gelinas criticized the idea of further privatization.
"They'll bleed staff away from our public hospitals and urgent care centres, making the health-care crisis much worse," she said in a written statement.
"If private surgery clinics accept your OHIP card for your procedure, they bill you for your room, the painkillers you take, your meals, the physical therapy you need and more."
Parts of health care are delivered by private companies, including many long-term care homes and nursing agencies. Hospitals have been using nursing agencies more and more during the staffing crisis, health-care officials say.
But those nurses come at a premium cost, said Dr. Michael Warner, an intensive care physician at Toronto's Michael Garron Hospital.
"Why is it that my hospital, for example, has at least three private agencies providing nurses every day to our hospital at a premium that's costing the hospital more than they'll have to pay our nurses?" Warner said.
"It's costing them sometimes double or triple the amount to pay these private companies."
Warner said some agencies are charging $110 per hour plus HST for a nurse.
Cathryn Hoy, the president of Ontario Nurses' Association, a union that represents more than 60,000 nurses and health-care workers, said some agencies are now charging hospitals more than $200 per hour, nearly four times what they charged before the pandemic.
Ford said there was little he could do about the situation.
"I can't control per se the private sector," he said when asked if it was price gouging.
And then choked on a bee.
That could potentially have been a loop hole.
