QUEBEC CITY – Canada’s current medicare system is unsustainable and needs a checkup, Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow said last week.
He said it is time for a national study of medicare to determine what is affordable, what are the potentials of new technology and what sort of system Canadians can realistically expect.
“We have to look at what medicare for the 21st Century really means,” he told a Feb. 3 news conference.
Newfoundland premier Brian Tobin agreed.
The country cannot afford a medical system with built-in costs escalating at 10 percent annually, he said.
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For the first time in history there are more Canadians older than 55 than there are younger than 15. Ottawa cannot be expected to offer a blank cheque to fund that kind of system.
“There isn’t enough money in the country to pay for that.”
Tobin said health care needs an infusion of federal money to get it onto a stable basis and then it needs reform.
Romanow later told reporters the notion that we fund everything in health care is something that even former Saskatchewan premier T.C. Douglas did not accept.
He said any reform of the system must happen within the principles of the Canadian Health Act. Perhaps even Alberta’s option of some private hospitals should be looked at, although the Saskatchewan premier was reluctant to see that happen.
“No one in our talks advocated two-tier,” said Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard.
– WILSON
