Pay your share, CMA tells Ottawa
CMA News 2000;10(1): 1
Ottawa must walk the walk if it wants to talk the talk about health care, CMA President Hugh Scully told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance during recent prebudget hearings. Currently, said Scully, the feds are just talking.
"The Canada Health Act assures Canadians they will have access to medically necessary services but federal transfers are not high enough to cover that commitment," warned Scully, who said that federal money for health and social programs announced in last year's budget only brought federal cash contributions back to 1995 levels. The CMA contends that factors such as a growing and aging population and new technologies mean that federal health spending lags behind the public's demand for care.
"The federal government must address the future health needs of our population and ensure that the health care system will be able to meet those needs," said Scully. "The combination of population growth and aging, the expanding knowledge base and emerging technology will put a level of demand on the health care system that has never been seen before."
He added that in their haste to reduce health care costs in recent years, governments have left the health care system destabilized and those who work in it demoralized. The problems were exacerbated by the federal cuts.
"While last year's reinvestment focused on the immediate crisis in the health care system, it failed to address some other key concerns such as the indexing of cash entitlements, the critical shortage of health care providers and the need to expand the continuum of care from hospital to community," said Scully. "A well-funded, sustainable, timely and quality health care system must be at the forefront of the federal government's strategic priorities for next year's federal budget."
The Health Action Lobby, a coalition of 29 health and consumer organizations that includes the CMA, the Canadian Nurses Association and the Canadian Healthcare Association, echoed the CMA approach with its call for an increase in federal funding. The sustainability message was bolstered by the release of Auditor General Denis Desautels annual report, in which he took the federal government to task for "passively" enforcing the Canada Health Act. Desautels also wrote that since the advent of the Canada Health and Social Transfer – which amalgamates all federal money transferred to the provinces for health, education and social programs – the federal government can't even determine how much federal money is being spent on health.
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© 2000 Canadian Medical Association
