CAIFA conference update: Romanow healthcare report called

CAIFA dismisses CIFP legal action over use of educational material CAIFA conference update: What is your capacity for service? Plan for “slow motion crisis” of an aging Canada, pension industry told Copayments Through Tax System Could Improve Health System, Reduce Tax Burden Medical Savings Accounts Bring Choice, Planning To Healthcare: Report Lewis predicts Romanow’s report […]

By Doug Watt | October 1, 2002 | Last updated on October 1, 2002
3 min read
  • CAIFA dismisses CIFP legal action over use of educational material
  • CAIFA conference update: What is your capacity for service?
  • Plan for “slow motion crisis” of an aging Canada, pension industry told
  • Copayments Through Tax System Could Improve Health System, Reduce Tax Burden
  • Medical Savings Accounts Bring Choice, Planning To Healthcare: Report

    Lewis predicts Romanow’s report will also recommend improvements in primary health systems, such as community clinics and group practices. And he expects that Romanow will recommend adding drug costs and home care to the publicly insured part of the system. This prediction was supported by Michael Decter of the National Board of the Canadian Institute for Health, another participant in the town hall discussion.

    “There is a larger private role in drug coverage than there is a public role, which I think is a disgrace,” Decter said, adding there’s a “great deal of rhetoric” on the privatization issue.

    “It’s an absolute waste of time and energy to debate whether the private sector has a role [in healthcare],” said Rob Brown of the Institute of Insurance and Pension Research.

    “The private sector already pays 30% of the costs,” Brown told the town hall. “The debate should be how do we decide what is publicly paid for and how we decide what is left to the private sector.”

    Figuring that out will require better access to data, Brown said, followed by a cost-benefit analysis. “Anything where you don’t get a bang for your buck should be allowed through private payment.”

    But Lewis believes Romanow will reject greater privatization of the system because, in his view, there’s no real evidence of better quality.

    “I beg you not to allow hyperbole induced by those who wish to privatize much of the system to allow our collective recognition that it is a good system to be undermined,” Lewis said. “Healthcare is a defining characteristic of the nation, it’s rooted in the basic values of the country.”

    Both Lewis and Decter said a new agreement on healthcare would eventually be reached, although Decter forecasted a “lively battle” between the federal government and the provinces following the release of the Romanow report.

    “I believe our political leaders will come to a renewal agreement on Canadian medicare because we want them to,” Decter said. “This is very central to us as a nation.”

    “The Canadian people will not tolerate otherwise,” agreed Lewis. He then added that after years of government and business focus on “financial architecture,” the pendulum is now swinging towards the human side of the equation.

    “We have been so obsessed with debt, deficit, taxes and the stock market, that the consequences of public policy, in human terms, have held very little centrality,” Lewis told CAIFA delegates. “One senses that we now understand that you can’t leave human beings so vulnerable.”

    Filed by Doug Watt, Advisor.ca, dwatt@advisor.ca.

    (10/01/02)

    Doug Watt

  • CAFP and CAIFA overwhelmingly approve merger to create new organization
  • CAIFA dismisses CIFP legal action over use of educational material
  • CAIFA conference update: What is your capacity for service?
  • Plan for “slow motion crisis” of an aging Canada, pension industry told
  • Copayments Through Tax System Could Improve Health System, Reduce Tax Burden
  • Medical Savings Accounts Bring Choice, Planning To Healthcare: Report

    Lewis predicts Romanow’s report will also recommend improvements in primary health systems, such as community clinics and group practices. And he expects that Romanow will recommend adding drug costs and home care to the publicly insured part of the system. This prediction was supported by Michael Decter of the National Board of the Canadian Institute for Health, another participant in the town hall discussion.

    “There is a larger private role in drug coverage than there is a public role, which I think is a disgrace,” Decter said, adding there’s a “great deal of rhetoric” on the privatization issue.

    “It’s an absolute waste of time and energy to debate whether the private sector has a role [in healthcare],” said Rob Brown of the Institute of Insurance and Pension Research.

    “The private sector already pays 30% of the costs,” Brown told the town hall. “The debate should be how do we decide what is publicly paid for and how we decide what is left to the private sector.”

    Figuring that out will require better access to data, Brown said, followed by a cost-benefit analysis. “Anything where you don’t get a bang for your buck should be allowed through private payment.”

    But Lewis believes Romanow will reject greater privatization of the system because, in his view, there’s no real evidence of better quality.

    “I beg you not to allow hyperbole induced by those who wish to privatize much of the system to allow our collective recognition that it is a good system to be undermined,” Lewis said. “Healthcare is a defining characteristic of the nation, it’s rooted in the basic values of the country.”

    Both Lewis and Decter said a new agreement on healthcare would eventually be reached, although Decter forecasted a “lively battle” between the federal government and the provinces following the release of the Romanow report.

    “I believe our political leaders will come to a renewal agreement on Canadian medicare because we want them to,” Decter said. “This is very central to us as a nation.”

    “The Canadian people will not tolerate otherwise,” agreed Lewis. He then added that after years of government and business focus on “financial architecture,” the pendulum is now swinging towards the human side of the equation.

    “We have been so obsessed with debt, deficit, taxes and the stock market, that the consequences of public policy, in human terms, have held very little centrality,” Lewis told CAIFA delegates. “One senses that we now understand that you can’t leave human beings so vulnerable.”

    Filed by Doug Watt, Advisor.ca, dwatt@advisor.ca.

    (10/01/02)