The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The Premiers have released a new proposal to achieve a national health agreement that would deliver real and positive change for Canadians. The Premiers' proposal clearly commits all governments to meaningful reductions in wait times in priority areas such as cancer, heart, diagnostic imaging, joint replacement and sight restoration. The Premiers' proposal guarantees that federal funding support reaches 25 per cent ($3.9B in 2004-05) of provincial-territorial spending and stays there. It also includes additional funding to support medical travel in the territories and Labrador, and a pharmacare strategy that addresses the need for a national formulary, bulk purchasing, improved prescribing and a further contribution to catastrophic coverage. Quebec will maintain its own formulary. In total, this would cost the federal government $5.2 billion this year. "It is always our goal to provide timely access to quality care; this is what Canadians expect and that's why we need the federal share to rise to and remain at 25 per cent," said Dalton McGuinty, Ontario Premier and Chair of the Council of the Federation. "But the bottom line is that the current federal offer adds only $2 billion a year to health care delivery." First Ministers are in agreement on the need to strengthen Equalization. Accordingly, the Premiers' proposal also addresses Equalization. Premiers call on the Prime Minister to convene a First Ministers' Meeting in advance of the next federal budget to address the fiscal pressures all governments are facing. This should be preceded by a meeting of federal-provincial/territorial Finance Ministers to develop options for review by First Ministers. Until a meaningful strengthening of Equalization is achieved, the federal government must restore the program to its 2000-01 level of $10.9 billion. The federal government has announced a framework offer over 10 years to address provincial and territorial concerns about health and Equalization. However, the federal offer overstates the new funding that it would provide and is inadequate to address the cost to the provinces of the mandated reforms. Over the six years of the agreement, the provinces and territories estimate that federal reforms will cost them $45 to $50 billion, compared to new health funding of only $12 billion. Over this same timeframe, the provinces and territories will spend close to $570 billion on health care. To arrive at its inflated estimate of new funding, the federal government assumes that Equalization and Territorial Formula Financing payments would have been frozen at 2004-05 levels for the next 10 years. Provinces have estimated that payments would have grown by $18 billion under its current structure over the next 10 years. The federal government used a similar methodology that over-estimates new Canada Health Transfer funding by assuming that health care transfers, under the current system, would not increase after 2010-11.
