Minimum Wages: Health Providers Against Poverty

Health Providers Against Poverty: Research shows poor people live shorter lives with more disability and that the precarious nature of low-wage work carries a greater risk of illness and injury, said Dr. Gary Bloch, a family physician at Torontos St. Michaels Hospital and a member of Health Providers Against Poverty, according to The Star. Our government has the power to prescribe better health, not through more drugs or heath technologies, but through a legislated living minimum wage, he said. A $14 minimum wage would put a full-time worker about 10 per cent above Ontarios poverty line of about $19,000 a year, after taxes and Ontario health-care providers are prescribing a $14 minimum wage to improve the failing health of low-wage workers in the province. Poverty-level minimum wages in a wealthy province like Ontario are both a tragedy and a public health travesty, Bloch told a Queens Park news conference Tuesday. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.