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Health care agreement offers hope

© David Russell

Is there a doctor in the house?

This week, provincial health ministers reached a tentative agreement with their federal counterpart that will see the establishment of a national council to oversee the distribution of new federal dollars to the provinces for health care.

Depending on your allegiances - federal or provincial - this is either exciting news or a measure that fails to go anywhere near far enough to ensure the best use of healthcare dollars.

Some background.

It comes as no surprise that Canada's beleaguered health care system has been in a state of crisis for some years now. Depending on to whom you listen, this is the fault of the federal government. Or the provinces. Or the baby boomers. Or the previous administrations (for no particular reason except for convenient scapegoating).

In truth, there are probably elements of all of the above in that have contributed to the maladies plaguing our ailing medical system. While provincial and territorial health ministers are quick to point out that health care funding has steadily increased since time immemorial. Tell that to great Aunt Gertie waiting three months for an MRI and another six for bionic hip installation.

Steve Austin would be appalled.

There are plenty of reasons for the increasingly poor ability of Canada's health care system to provide sufficiently timely diagnosis and treatment of the nation's ill. Many provincial governments claim the amount of funding is not the problem; it's how the health regions spend the money that's flawed. This is usually followed by public wailing at the federal government for increased health care funding.

True, expenditures have increased in health care and equally true is the provincial and territorial claims of marked decreases in federal government contributions to the system, at least as a percentage of total health care spending.

When the Canada Health Act was first envisioned, the plan called for a fifty-fifty split between the federal government and the provinces to cover the cost of the provinces administering health care in compliance with the federal guidelines. That way, the theory goes, all Canadians are able to experience the same standard of care regardless of which part of the country they live in.

Successive federal governments, however, particularly the Liberal government of the early to mid 1990's, continuously reduced the federal commitment to health care spending, spearheaded by soon to be Prime Minister and then Finance Minister, Paul Martin. In Martin and Company's zeal to eliminate the deficit-plagued budget they had inherited from the Mulroney Tories, Martin and Chrètien were far from the socially progressive, tax and spend liberals the country expected and critics accused them of.