Health Policy - Op Eds

The Ontario government is reorganizing health care, from the Health Ministry to the doctor’s office. To meet the goals of reducing wait times, constraining costs and ensuring patients have access to high-quality health care, the government should address fundamental challenges in primary care and how family doctors are paid.

Ending hallway medicine was one of the signature campaign promises of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives when they were elected. To this end, the government proposed a health care system reorganization, featuring a network of Ontario Health Teams with responsibility for supplying “integrated” health care to all residents.

Patients and health professionals are waiting to hear what the government will…

The final report of the federal Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare, which was chaired by former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins, recommends a universal pharmacare program with Ottawa covering all incremental costs. We offer a second opinion. There are better, cheaper ways to achieve the same goal.

The council’s proposal would begin by covering 136 essential medicines as of 2022. As many observers have repeatedly warned, a one-size national program would not mesh well with existing provincial drug programs, nor with the provincially managed and funded doctor and hospital services that run alongside them. Because provincial tax-funded drug programs have varying levels of coverage and costs, the…

If you were expecting the Liberals to launch a much-anticipated national pharmacare plan as part of its election-year budget, you were likely sorely disappointed. Despite the release of the interim report of the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare earlier this month, and various politicians making various noises about the possibility of such an ambitious proposal, there was almost no new information in the budget about pharmacare, other than new funding that would land years from now. And with important questions left unanswered, provinces and private-insurance companies continue to endure much uncertainty about what the future holds.

Here’s what the budget does provide for: $35 million over 4 years,…

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s decision last fall to put the retailing of cannabis in the hands of the private sector was a good one. The province recently held a lottery to determine who would operate as a cannabis retailer.

The use of a lottery, as opposed to an auction or a “preferred suppliers” rule, to allocate retail outlets can be defended on two grounds. One is that the government did not wish to give excessive retail power to existing cannabis interests with deep pockets, or to other retailers such as Walmart or a pharmacy chain. An auction would likely have resulted in a concentration of retail power akin to the concentration of production power that exists at present. That concentration of production power already places…

The 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples made prominent reference to a 1613 treaty between the Dutch and Mohawk: “Three beads of wampum separating the two purple rows symbolize peace, friendship and respect. The two rows of purple are two vessels travelling down the same river together. One, a birch bark canoe, is for the Indian people, their laws, their customs, and their ways. The other, a ship, is for the white people and their laws, their customs and their ways. We shall each travel the river together, side by side, but in our own boat.”

The intent of much Canadian Indigenous policy since 1996 has been to "strengthen the canoe.” Overall, this has been a worthy exercise in the pursuit of reconciliation with those…