Save Health Care. Give the Canada Health Act a Sunset Clause: National Post Op-Ed
Published in the National Post on March 7, 2011
By Colin Busby
In 1984, the federal Parliament unanimously passed the Canada Health Act (CHA). Ottawa enshrined the principles of public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability and accessibility as the cornerstones of Canada’s public health system, and made federal health-care funding conditional on the provinces’ adherence to these principles.
Today, the CHA is showing its age. The laws that best suited Canadian health care in the 1980s no longer meet the challenges of 2011; the size of the system, its cost and its complexity have grown. Revisiting the principles of the CHA, and their effectiveness in improving health-care delivery over…
Why Do We Still Subsidize Care for the Well-to-do? Globe and Mail Op-Ed
Published in the Globe and Mail on November 19, 2010
By Michael Bliss
There are no quick “fixes” to Canada’s system of national health insurance. Many prescriptions for change can’t be implemented because of public resistance. But it’s feasible to reduce the financial burdens of health care on Canadian governments. The history of our other major social programs suggests we can usefully revisit the idea of universal entitlement to benefits. As it does with child care and old age pensions, the state can helpfully subsidize the needy. It doesn’t have to pay for everyone’s health care.
What are the lessons taught by our history of medicare? My first conclusion is that we should get over being obsessed by the cost…
Universal Health Care ‘Problematic’: National Post Op-Ed
Published in the National Post on November 19, 2010
By Michael Bliss
In a way that Canadians do not like to recognize, modern history has already passed stark and sobering judgment on Canadian medicare.
Despite the system’s popularity and iconic status; despite the belief by many Canadian health experts that the Canada Health Act system, a single-payer government monopoly, is the best way to deliver modern healthcare; and despite years of nationalist proclamation that Canadian health insurance ought to be a model to the world (and especially to the United States), no country has adopted the Canadian model.
In the eyes of the world, Cuba and North Korea perhaps excepted, Canadian medicare is not a model.…
Critical Condition: A Historian’s Prognosis on Canada’s Aging Healthcare System
Deductible’s Demise Offers Lessons: Globe And Mail Op-ed
Published in the Globe and Mail on September 27, 2010
By Mark Stabile
On Wednesday, the Government of Quebec announced it was dropping a proposal for a health-care deductible on users of doctors’ services. The deductible’s objectives were to raise money for the government and to increase people’s awareness of the cost of health care.
In most provinces, health-care expenditures continue to grow faster than GDP. Quebec’s Finance Minister discovered, however, that proposing a deductible – a $25 user fee for doctors’ visits – generated significant resistance.
Sevil N-Marandi and I studied the issues and found that the failed proposal would not have met its two objectives. It would have generated between…