The Globe and Mail reports that the Conference Board of Canada has released a report card ranking provinces with respect to health care.
Health care columnist Andre Picard writes, “A grades went to B.C., Alberta and Ontario; B scores were earned by Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; D was the mark given to Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. …To get a sense of how well each province’s health system was doing overall, they measured 90 different indicators in a variety of categories, including lifestyle factors, health status, health resources and health care system performance.”
He comments, “We labour under the illusion that we have a national health system. We don’t. There are 14 different health systems in the country: provincial, territorial and federal (Ottawa is responsible for aboriginal peoples, the Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP and it’s unfortunate they are not included in the Conference Board report card.) More than anything else, what the new report card shows is that there are significant disparities in the quality and performance of health systems between provinces. This is not overly surprising but it demonstrates, once again, that there needs to be some leveling of the playing field. This is a role that the federal government should play but does not.”
Council of Canadians health care campaigner Adrienne Silnicki has made the point that the 2014 Canada Health Accord should be the tool that ensures national standards and equality of access to health care across the country. She recently pointed out as an example that, “It is incredibly unjust that across Canada people pay different prices for the same drugs and some people aren’t able to access the drugs that they need. Provinces and territories have different drug purchasing lists, which mean that access to medicine is not the same across our country. …A 2014 Health Accord with a national pharmacare program will ensure that all Canadians can access the same drugs, without worrying about their ability to pay for them.”
Silnicki also recently noted the Harper government cuts to the Health Council of Canada. “The Health Council of Canada reported annually on provinces and territories’ progress on the benchmarks agreed to in the 2004 Health Accord. Their voice was important for pan-Canadian analysis and provincial and territorial access to care comparisons. …After releasing several reports showing the growing gap in access to healthcare across Canada and the refusal of the Harper government to play a role in health care, the federal government has now silenced the HCC by taking away their funding. It seems anyone who shows the federal government in a negative light has to be prepared to suffered immense consequences.”
And she has written, “The 2014 Health Accord gives our leaders an opportunity to share best practices in public health care, discuss evidence-based and innovative solutions, set national standards on care to ensure that every person in Canada receives quality care, and look at areas that are under-served or not covered by medicare – like home and community care, long term care, mental health, dental care, and pharmacare – and find ways to expand the medicare umbrella.” Instead, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty unilaterally announced in December 2011 a non-negotiable federal funding plan that runs from 2014 to 2024. According to former Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, the Harper government’s new funding formula will cost the provinces about $31 billion over the life of the 2014 Canada Health Accord. While $31 billion is a staggering figure, in July 2012 the provincial premiers forecast the cut would be closer to $36 billion.
What will be the next key moment in our campaign to stop Harper’s agenda with respect to health care? The Council of the Federation – the thirteen premiers of Canada – will be meeting on July 24-26 in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. This will be an important opportunity – prior to the March 2014 implementation of the new Canada Health Accord – to pressure provincial premiers to oppose the billions that will be lost from public health care in Canada and to encourage them to push for national standards and an expansion of medicare. And following last month’s lobby week with Members of Parliament in their home ridings, we will next be lobbying MPs in Ottawa this coming December in the crucial months before the implementation of the Accord.
For more, please read:
Can New Brunswick afford a $715 million cut to medicare?
The Trouble with Evidence: Cuts to the Health Council of Canada
UPDATE: Council of Federation to meet in Niagara-on-the-Lake, July 24-26
It’s National Health Care Lobby Week (in Riding Offices)
Medicare allies take their message to Parliament Hill
