Op-Eds
Published in the Ottawa Citizen on November 13, 2013
By Colin Busby
With a bulge of baby boomers approaching retirement, many Canadians are unprepared for the extra costs of health care in life’s later years. Our public health-care system does not cover most long-term care costs and Canadians are, for the most part, not saving for them. Forward-looking reforms should encourage that more money be put aside for tomorrow’s costs, and that government funds support patient preferences for location of care.
The system of public health insurance in Canada mainly covers hospital and physician costs, but with respect to other forms of health care — such as drugs, long-term care, dental care — private insurance or…
Published in the Waterloo Record on June 25th, 2013
By Jason Sutherland
When it comes to the way Ontario funds its hospitals, it is only now moving beyond the 8-track era.
The government is modifying its outdated payment systems to try and change the same old tune that has played for decades: long wait lists, bed blockers and cancelled surgeries.
Ontario pays for most of its hospital care using the same global budget "lump sum" approach it has used since the late 1960s. Meanwhile, the rest of the industrialized world has spent the last 30 years moving to funding models that pay hospitals based on the types and quantities of patients they treat.
At the same time as these kinds of long overdue…
Published in the Globe and Mail on June 20, 2013
By Jason Sutherland and Erik Hellsten
When it comes to the way we fund our hospitals, Ontario is only now moving beyond the 8-track era. The government is modifying its outdated payment systems to try and change the same old tune that has played for decades: long wait lists, bed blockers and cancelled surgeries.
Ontario pays for most of its hospital care using the same global budget “lump sum” approach it has used since the late 1960s. Meanwhile, the rest of the industrialized world has spent the last thirty years moving to funding models that pay hospitals based on the types and quantities of patients they treat. Forward-thinking countries are already shifting…
Published in the Vancouver Sun on June 12, 2013
By Steve Morgan
It has been a decade since British Columbia implemented Fair PharmaCare.
The program ended what was effectively public provision of prescription medicines for seniors and created an income-based government safety net for all people, regardless of age.
So how has the program performed?
In a paper published this week by the C.D. Howe Institute, my colleagues and I review the performance of Canadian PharmaCare models against systems in comparable countries around the world. We find that B.C. fares poorly within Canada, and that Canada fares poorly among comparable countries abroad.
Under Fair PharmaCare, public subsidies kick in…
Published in the Edmonton Journal on November 16, 2012
By Ake Blomqvist and Colin Busby
In Alberta, as well as across Canada, many citizens do not have family doctors, and those who do often cannot access them when needed. Health systems in other countries, however, have found ways to improve primary care access.
One solution is to pay doctors a lump sum for the number of patients under their care instead of a fee for each service provided. The result would be improved access and more value for money in the health-care system.
Canada’s provinces lag behind their peers in health-care access. The 2011 Commonwealth Fund Health Policy Survey found about 23 per cent of Canadians who needed primary care had to…
