Rosalie Wyonch – Healthcare Spending: Ambition Exceeds Capacity
From: Rosalie Wyonch To: Ontario Taxpayers Date: April 4, 2018 Re: Healthcare spending: ambition exceeds capacity Ontario’s 2018 budget – entitled “A Plan for Care and Opportunity” – focuses heavily on healthcare in all its forms. It encompasses initiatives and investments in hospitals, homecare, pharmacare, mental health and compassionate end-of-life care. Each proposal for expansion may have individual merits, […] Colin Busby – Bad to Worse in Healthcare: How the Provinces Rank Internationally
From: Colin Busby To: Provincial Ministers of Health Date: January 29, 2018 Re: Bad to Worse in Healthcare: How the Provinces Rank Internationally Canadian provincial healthcare systems fare poorly compared to peer countries according to our new report. We examined how the provinces, the major healthcare deliverers in Canada, fare compared to other nations in healthcare provision. We […] Reality Bites: How Canada’s Healthcare System Compares to its International Peers
Canadian provincial healthcare systems fare poorly compared to peer countries according to new research from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Reality Bites: How Canada’s Healthcare System Compares to its International Peers,” authors Colin Busby, Ramya Muthukaran and Aaron Jacobs examine how the provinces, the major healthcare deliverers in Canada, fare compared to other nations in […] William B.P. Robson – Healthcare Costs in Canada: Stopping Bad News Getting Worse
From: William Robson To: Provincial Finance Ministers and Taxpayers Date: December 13, 2017 Re: Healthcare Costs in Canada: Stopping Bad News Getting Worse The long-term sustainability of publicly funded healthcare is a matter of debate. Many people worry about slower economic growth and other claims on governments crimping healthcare spending, while aging, new treatments, powerful provider groups and chronically […] Busby, Blomqvist – Draft Regulations For Drugs – A Mixed Bag (ii)
From: Colin Busby and Åke Blomqvist To: Canadian Drug Purchasers Date: December 12, 2017 Re: Draft Regulations for Drugs – A Mixed Bag (II) Lost in media reports regarding headline numbers of potential savings through the announced Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) reforms is the larger issue of whether the price paid reflects the […] Farah Omran – Life after OHIP+
From: Farah Omran To: Canada’s healthcare officials and policymakers Date: October 25, 2017 Re: Life after OHIP+ Ontario’s 2017 budget announced a universal drug program for youth under the age of 25 starting in 2018. Dubbed OHIP+, it will allow Ontarians under 25 free access to prescription drugs. Although OHIP+ is a step forward in addressing […] Rosalie Wyonch – Canada’s Food Guide – Building On Shaky Foundations
From: Rosalie Wyonch To: Minister of Health, Ginette Petitpas Taylor Date: October 3, 2017 Re: Canada’s Food Guide – Building on Shaky Foundations The federal government is in the final stages of its plan to improve the outdated Canada Food Guide with the goal of curbing obesity and preventing health problems related to excess weight and an unhealthy diet. […] Ottawa’s Tax Moves Reveal Sad State Of Doctor Compensation: Globe And Mail Op-ed
Physicians, especially those in Ontario, are furious at the federal government’s proposed changes to small-business taxation. The federal changes follow successive unilateral fee decreases imposed by the government of Ontario and will further sour bargaining negotiations, likely resulting in an undesirable arbitration process.
This is the basic state of physician compensation today: Doctors are self-employed small-business entrepreneurs (with one payer) who bargain as a non-union unit with no ability to strike and binding arbitration rights. It is an awkward structure, to put it mildly.
At the outset of Canadian medicare in the 1960s, the major obstacle to making a public-insurance scheme reality came from physician groups…
Busby and Blomqvist – Here’s a better plan for OHIP +
From: Colin Busby and Åke Blomqvist To: Charles Sousa, Ontario Minister of Finance Date: August 4, 2017 Re: Here’s a better plan for OHIP + With much fanfare, Ontario’s 2017 budget announced the introduction of universal drug coverage, starting next January, for those under age 25. True, a lack of drug coverage is an important gap in Canadian […] Covering Drugs For Young People Isn’t The Best Way To Fill Gaps In Health Care: Toronto Star Op-ed
With much fanfare, Ontario’s 2017 budget announced the introduction of universal drug coverage, starting next January, for those under age 25. True, drugs are an important part of the problem in gaps in publicly funded healthcare. But even with an annual starting cost estimated at $480 million, “OHIP+” looks like a poor approach to closing the pharmacare gap while taking up limited fiscal room to close health gaps elsewhere.
Much of the money for OHIP+ will pay for the drugs of people who didn’t have any access problems in the first place. A more targeted approach could have a much larger effect on addressing the many unmet healthcare needs of Ontarians.
…Blomqvist And Busby – It’s Time For Healthcare To Join The Productivity Parade
From: Åke Blomqvist and Colin Busby To: Ministers of Health and Finance in Canada Date: July 14, 2017 Re: It’s Time for Healthcare to Join the Productivity Parade Slow productivity growth is an important reason why real income and living standards for many Canadians are stagnating. At the same time, surveys have suggested that the […] To fix health system we need to invite competition from private sector: Globe and Mail Op-Ed
Until a few years ago, the main concern in the Canadian debate over health policy was how to control costs. When provinces managed to restrain health-care spending growth to an average rate below that of the economy as a whole (since 2010), that concern subsided somewhat; we had “bent the cost curve” and things seemed to be under control. But as a devastating pair of reports in The Globe and Mail makes clear, the cost-cutting in health care is threatening to make a mockery of the claim that access to health care in Canada does not depend on ability to pay.
As wait times even for things like urgently needed orthopedic and eye surgery become impossibly long, there are more and more desperate patients who are…