FAIR Canada applauds Saskatchewan’s OBSI bill
"Landmark" legislation is significant step forward in protecting investors, organization says
By James Langton |May 28, 2024
2 min read
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“The new money that I propose investing in healthcare is to stabilize the system over the short term and then to buy enduring change over the long term,” Romanow says. “I cannot say often enough that the status quo is not an option.”
The former Saskatchewan premier says he believes the necessary funding can come from current federal surpluses, not by raising taxes.The provisional funding, totalling $8.5 billion, would be focused on five areas: home care, prescription drugs, diagnostic services, rural and remote access and primary healthcare.
The report’s proposed national home care system, at a projected cost of $1 billion annually, would include support for those with mental illness, post-acute care for patients recently released from hospital and palliative care for the terminally ill. Unpaid caregivers, such as family members, would also be eligible for time off work and would qualify for special benefits under the federal employment insurance program.
Under the $1 billion drug program, the provinces would receive additional funds to help cover the cost of prescription drug plans and to protect Canadians against the potentially catastrophic impact of expensive drugs.
“Too many Canadians have no drug coverage at all and existing provincial drug insurance coverage is uneven,” Romanow says. He rejected integrating all prescription drug programs into the Canada Health Act, citing the “substantial cost” of a national pharmacare program.
The report recommends the creation of a National Drug Agency mandated to monitor the prescription drug system.
The commission also suggests modernizing the Canada Health Act and creating a federal-provincial Health Council of Canada, to measure the performance of the healthcare system and make recommendations for improvements.
The controversial idea of expanding private sector involvement in the healthcare system plays no part in Romanow’s vision. He says that many private-sector concepts, such as pay-as-you-go, user fees and fast-track treatments have already being tried and rejected.
“We’ve been there. The old solutions did not work and were discarded for that reason. And the preponderance of evidence is that they will not work today.”
The Romanow commission spent 18 months on the report, researching the healthcare system and conducting wide-ranging consultations across the country.
Last month, a Senate committee headed by Michael Kirby recommended that Ottawa spend an additional $5 billion a year on healthcare in an effort to fix a system it concluded was not fiscally sustainable. The Kirby report said the new money could be raised by tacking an additional 1.5% on to the goods and services tax or by introducing an annual healthcare insurance premium tied to income levels.
Filed by Doug Watt, Advisor.ca, dwatt@advisor.ca.
(11/28/02)
