If it's essential to the survival of our citizenry, there are zero excuses for it being private in the first place

Yep

NDP should have been looking into making them a public company

Yes. We should account for what they've done so far, and what their road blocks were. I want them to be a getting shit done Mamdani.

While I understand that these workers striking may put lab results on delay, that's the cost of Privatizing healthcare. It is not the fault of the people striking...

Well, i concur. However, as a person who has to make decisions on the backs of previous decisions like this you've got to make a tough decision: let people die, or support the strikers. I myself would bring them back to work AND do as much as possible to get private labs out of the system.

It's also why things like Protesting for Palestine does absolutely nothing at the government level

I mostly concur with you here, that protesting really feels ineffective compared to say Luigi, we should remember it's not nothing, and it has had success in the past (ghandi, and MLK).