The federal government has embraced the recommendations of a national advisory committee to expand the publicly funded medicare system to cover home care and pharmaceutical drugs.
While the opposition Bloc QuŽbecois denounced the idea as interference in provincial affairs and a Canadian Medical Association spokesperson said the forum missed the point, the federal Liberals said they will take the idea to provincial governments for discussion.
They were particularly enthused that the National Forum on Health, which ended its two-year study of the medicare system with a Feb. 4 report, praised the publicly funded system. The forum opposes any proposal to inject private parallel services, user fees or medicine-for-profit into the system.
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It was what the election-bound Liberals wanted to hear.
“Our government is convinced that through careful reform, Canada’s quality health-care system can be preserved for generations to come,” prime minister Jean ChrŽtien said as he accepted the report from the $10 million study group created by the government in 1994. “Medicare is a cherished legacy that we will never abandon as long as I am prime minister. Canadians want the federal government to remain as guardians of medicare,” said ChrŽtien.
Against suggestions
It was a point that drove the BQ to denounce the forum recommendations, including medicare’s expansion into such traditional provincial jurisdictions as home care.
“The forum has just legitimatized centralization so treasured by Jean ChrŽtien’s Liberals,” said BQ health critic Pauline Picard.
Reform critic Grant Hill complained that by opposing introduction of private medicine, the forum had missed a chance to make medicare more flexible and better funded.
In fact, the funding question was one area in which the Liberals adopted selective vision.
No more for provinces
They stopped well short of endorsing another key recommendation that Ottawa restore more than $1 billion to the pot of money it transfers to the provinces for health funding.
Last year, the government announced it will cut the transfer to $11 billion. The National Forum on Health said it should not fall below $12.5 billion.
When critics, including the New Democratic Party, demanded the government announce the cuts will not proceed, health minister David Dingwall contented himself with noting that the forum said the Canadian medical system is not underfunded.
“The forum has said very clearly that it is not an issue of funding,” he told New Democrat Svend Robinson Feb. 4. “It is an issue of managing and substantially changing the direction in which health care is heading.”
He said he will take the report for discussion to the next federal-provincial meeting of health ministers.
Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow noted financing is a problem that requires political discussion.
“The issue is, where’s the wallet? There needs to be an end to unilateral federal cuts to the health-care system – $7 billion already – and a commitment, at least, to a gradual return to previous levels,” he said.
