Life Insurance

Cut health-care costs by getting back to basics CBC.ca

22.04.10

Quebec is proposing user fees for visits to a doctor. Ontario is forcing pharmacies to cut generic-drug prices to half the current level and wants to eliminate incentive fees that generic-drug manufacturers pay to pharmacists. And British Columbia is switching from financing hospitals with block grants to putting in place a fee-for-procedure payment system.

Yet costs are increasing on average by about six per cent a year, much faster than population growth and inflation. Increases will only accelerate with the aging population and the increasing price of life-extending drugs that fortunately continue to come on the market.

Health care now consumes more than 40 per cent of provincial budgets, and that is with the current federal health-care funding agreement negotiated in 2004 between Paul Martin's Liberal government and the provinces.

That program expires in 2013, and whatever replaces it won't be as generous or as long-term. The agreement was reached after hard bargaining, at a time when Ottawa and most of the provinces had budget surpluses and the economy was booming. Negotiations for a new arrangement will take place with Ottawa and most of the provinces in deficit and the economy still emerging from its slowdown.

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