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Macdonald-Laurier Institute

The Vancouver Sun – Health accord: A small step in the right direction

December 21, 2011
in Domestic Policy Program, Health, In the Media, Latest News
Reading Time: 4 mins read
A A

December 21, 2011 – In today’s Vancouver Sun, MLI’s Jason Clemens and Brian Lee Crowley discuss the recently announced Canada Health Accord between the federal and provincial governments. They say, “Ottawa’s plan is to make some token effort at cost control in five years’ time. That’s five years too late. Refusing to turn up the heat on the provinces is a lost opportunity Canadians can ill afford.” The full op-ed is below:

 

Health Accord: A small step in the right direction

By Jason Clemens and Brian Lee Crowley, The Vancouver Sun, December 21, 2011

Comment on Ottawa’s pre-emptive proposal in Victoria this week for renewing  the Canada Health Accord has focused largely on the tiny reduction in the growth  in the Canada Health Transfer (CHT) that will occur in 2018. Provinces are  apoplectic because health care costs are rising and “miserly” Ottawa makes a  convenient fall guy. But if we know anything about Canadian health care it is  this: We get poor value for the hundreds of billions we spend, and increasing  federal transfers only delays the day when we reform health care to make it  affordable and effective.

Ottawa’s plan is to make some token effort at cost control in five years’  time. That’s five years too late. Refusing to turn up the heat on the provinces  is a lost opportunity Canadians can ill afford.

Evidence of the poor value we get for our health dollars abounds. Measure  Canada against most other major Western countries with a universal health care  system and you’ll find that our access to doctors, nurses, therapeutic drugs,  surgery and other specialist care and the latest technologies is inferior, often  shockingly so. Yet our system is the one of the most expensive in the world.

You’d think that the renewal of the CHT would be a golden opportunity for the  federal government to call the provinces to account. Au contraire.

The Conservatives propose increasing the CHT by six per cent until 2017-18.  It will thus rise from roughly $27 billion today to $38 billion by 2018-19, up  by over 40 per cent in less than a decade. Then the CHT will rise by a minimum  of three per cent annually, and more if growth and inflation combined are  higher. This means a minor reduction in the growth of the CHT starting in  2018-19.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s announcement focuses exclusively on the value  of the health transfer. Yet if we learned anything from the Liberals’ hugely  successful fiscal reforms of the 1990s, it is that reforming transfers to the  provinces is a powerful way to shake them out of their torpor.

Remember that, faced with spiral-ling debt and out-of-control spending, the  Liberals both reduced and reformed provincial transfers in 1995 as part of their  larger effort to balance the budget.

What the Liberals inadvertently discovered was the two-pronged approach that  makes provinces take seriously the need for reform.

First, they told the provinces that Ottawa is not an ATM and would not  continue to enable their undisciplined spending behaviour through ever-growing  transfers. Finance Minister Paul Martin didn’t just stop increasing the  transfers for health and social services – he cut the absolute amount  transferred.

Second, and crucially, however, the Liberals provided the provinces with  greater flexibility and autonomy in designing, regulating, and providing social  welfare. They did this by removing conditions attached to federal social  transfers and eliminated most national standards for social assistance. Less  money coupled with greater autonomy and flexibility meant that the provinces had  the power and incentive to actually solve welfare problems.

The result of these federal reforms was a wave of innovation and  experimentation by the provinces in welfare. Alberta, for instance, focused on  getting employable young people into work, while Ontario implemented workfare.  British Columbia set time limits for welfare use.

The results were stunningly successful: welfare dependency rates were more  than halved, labour participation improved, and poverty rates declined.

The Liberals failed to give the provinces that same freedom to experiment  with health care reform, and that is why reform never took root there. It is not  too late, however.

Applying the lessons of the 1990s to our desperate need for new thinking in  health care today, Ottawa should cap the CHT immediately. Having got the  provinces’ attention, it should then tell them Ottawa will be a supportive  partner in facilitating change by making it clear that the Canada Health Act  will be interpreted flexibly and liberally, providing the provinces with  maxi-mum autonomy in financing, regulating, and providing universal and portable  health care to their citizens.

Just as with welfare, such changes would unleash a period of experimentation  and innovation by the provinces-just what the doctor ordered.

Ottawa can and should ignore self-interested bleating by the provinces.  They’ve had decades to put their health care house in order and failed despite  years of ever greater federal dollars.

Ottawa’s CHT announcement suggests that they get that transfer reform can  help, but they are being far too timid when Canadians need bold action on health  care reform now.

Brian Lee Crowley is the managing director and Jason Clemens is the director  of research at the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

 

Tags: Brian Lee Crowleyhealth careJason Clemens
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