Can McGuinty Lead Health Reform?

It’s time for a serious discussion on health care, and the Liberals need to make it happen.

Canada has a spending problem. The 2010 federal budget runs a deficit of $49.2 billion. The Conservatives have a plan to balance it by the 2015-16 fiscal year through the eventual elimination of stimulus spending and promises of further cuts to government largesse. Such measures will certainly help, but they can only do so much.

What about the elephant in the room? Health care costs continue to grow at a staggering pace and will continue to do so as the baby boomers experience increasingly serious age-related health issues. Already in some provinces, health care accounts for almost half of government spending.

In this new era of fiscal restraint can we seriously expect the government to fund our ever expanding appetite for health care?

Our neighbours to the south are undergoing a once-in-a-generation political battle as President Obama attempts to overhaul the American health care system. If the reforms pass, they will institute a form of universal coverage in the United States. But just because the U.S. might be moving its system closer to ours doesn’t mean our system is fine. The fact is, health care in Canada is bleeding cash.

We call ours a universal system, but it’s universal in name only. Conventional wisdom portrays the American system as broken because it fails to provide adequate health care to the poor. Our system is also broken. We simply ration care in a different way.

Our system punishes everyone through lengthy wait times for diagnosis, procedures, and treatments. People may not be going bankrupt here, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t suffering. And we are kidding ourselves if we think that the poor aren’t more adversely affected. In general, poor people tend to have more health problems and are the ones waiting in line in the first place, with fewer contacts to work the system and jump the queue.

Efficiency is a buzzword that has, to date, been foreign to the Canadian system. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has indicated that he recognizes this. “Just 20 years ago, 32 cents of every dollar spent on government programs were spent on health care,” McGuinty said in his most recent throne speech. “Today, it is 46 cents. In 12 years, it could be 70 cents.”

McGuinty has promised that Ontario will lead a national discussion on health care. What exactly this means is still anyone’s guess, but it is a great opportunity. If we want to have a serious discussion about how our health care system can truly provide universal access, it means having a serious discussion about moving away from a monopoly payer (the government) and giving individuals the option of purchasing insurance for medically necessary services or paying for those services themselves.

The reality is that only a Liberal can lead this discussion. While Canadians may view Conservatives as good managers of the country’s finances, we are suspicious of them when they want to tinker with our social programs, often assuming some hidden agenda.

So McGuinty has the chance to show real leadership, move beyond efficiency rhetoric and ehealth boondoggles, and engage the support of other political parties across the country – support that is more likely to come from the right than the left.