Ottawa plans to hack health-care funding

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty surprised the premiers at a meeting last December with a 10-year funding arrangement

Concerns the federal Tories are putting the health care of Canadians, especially seniors, at risk echo throughout the province and the rest of the country, with pending cuts to federal health funding.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty surprised the premiers at a meeting last December with a 10-year funding arrangement that ends his government’s current health-care funding increases of six per cent a year by 2017.

Starting in 2014, a new per capita health-care plan will reduce British Columbia’s funding because it doesn’t take into account the higher costs of an aging population, estimated at a cost to the province of $256 million a year.

By 2018, the increases will be tied to expansion of the economy, including inflation, which parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page estimated will drop funding to average 3.9 per cent nationally.

Premier Christy Clark and many other premiers recently said they would form a united front against Ottawa’s “unacceptable” changes in health-care funding.

Mel Torgerson, who works extensively in seniors’ care management in 100 Mile House, said the funding formula won’t measure up for providing adequate health care for aging people in the province.

“I agree with Christy Clark. In my opinion, we are moving backwards instead of forward when it comes to funding for seniors.

“Demographics show where we are going with the population of seniors. We are in a sad state when we can’t find beds or housing for the people who deserve it most.”

However, Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo MP Cathy McLeod said health transfers after 2017 will actually start at a three per cent baseline and any beyond that will be linked to the nominal GDP (gross domestic product – an economy index).

“Per capita is a fair way for all Canadians in terms of funding for health care.

“We have an equalization system that deals with the … different challenges the provinces have and how things are going economically.”

However, she noted the equalization is a separate process not specific to health care.

On Jan. 16, Prime Minister Stephen Harper again rejected requests from B.C. and other provinces that the per capita health-care funding formula be modified to reflect an aging population, increasing remote communities and other drivers of health-care costs.

McLeod explained it is a “very generous and very appropriate” plan, which will change the conversation between the federal and provincial health ministers away from “just the money” to focus instead on determining benchmarks, measurements and accountability in the system.

Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo Liberal Riding Association president Diane McLeod said she thinks all Canadians are concerned with the inequities of health coverage and costs of delivery across the country.

“The eventual per-capita funding set out in this announcement is most certainly a concern for B.C. because of our larger proportion of elder Canadians, and as the Baby Boomers age, more and more are moving to our province.

“It is ironic that because of the demographics in this country, the prime minister’s home province will come out ahead of all the [other] provinces and territories.”

 

100 Mile House Free Press