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Here’s to healthy user fees
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
April 06, 2010
Only a fee that patients must confront at the time of each visit will spark them to ask themselves whether seeing the doctor is necessary. And only when they are forced to face the prospect of paying for some of their care directly, will they begin to demand more private delivery choices to ensure value for their dollars.
Tags: Health
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Lower hurdles for foreign professions
Monday, April 5th, 2010
Apr 05 2010
Ontario, with a shortage of skilled workers and an aging population, needs skilled immigrants to find places in their professions. …skilled immigrants still face unnecessary barriers to get licensed, and they earn far less than their Canadian-educated counterparts do. Some are so disillusioned they say that, had they known how bad it would be, they never would never have come… Augustine rightly calls that an “alarming” message that Ontario cannot afford to ignore.
Tags: immigration
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Autism remains unresolved issue
Monday, April 5th, 2010
Apr 04 2010
There are 1,478 autistic children on a waiting list for the intensive government-funded therapy known as IBI… The government’s solution to the waiting list is to move more autistic kids into the school system where they can receive therapy and an education. With the right supports, kids 6 or older could be in school, thereby freeing up spaces for the younger kids on the therapy wait list… Tens of millions have been spent preparing and training 13,000 teachers, principals and other staff; yet only 170 autistic kids have been brought into the school system under the program.
Tags: mental Health
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
The prison spending boom
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
Mar. 31, 2010
The crime agenda is in direct conflict with the government’s stated goal of bringing the deficit under control. In frugal times there is an extra onus on government to justify a big boost to any budget, let alone to the prison budget during an era when crime is dropping. While nearly every other department, including the military and the Public Health Agency of Canada, faces cuts, 5,300 new corrections employees will be hired.
Tags: corrections
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Take a firm stand against user fees
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
Apr 03 2010
The Quebec proposals are a political sleight of hand, a medical mistake and a social policy blunder. They will do nothing to prevent rising health-care costs, which are more a function of growing pharmaceutical expenses and persistent inefficiencies in the system. The idea that patients are somehow driving demand has long ago been discredited by health economists, who point to physicians as the gatekeepers of the system.
Tags: Health
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Minimum wage stalled?
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
Mar 31 2010
Ontario cannot afford to fall behind again on minimum wages. The size and timing of the next increase is something for debate. But at the very least the minimum wage should be tied to the cost of living so that its value is not eroded by inflation.
…a minimum wage that is high enough to lift a worker out of poverty is part of the package of necessary measures.
Tags: poverty
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Liberals start an adult conversation
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
Mar 30 2010
Give Michael Ignatieff and the Liberals credit: they tackled some difficult subjects at their weekend thinkers’ conference and invited speakers who would not necessarily tell them what they wanted to hear…
…at least Ignatieff is headed in the right direction – toward an adult conversation about the problems facing the country. He should be encouraged in this, not derided by the commentariat.
Tags: economy
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Call for action on Alzheimer’s
Monday, March 29th, 2010
Mar 29 2010
Along with other health costs that are rising due to a rapidly aging population, the growth in Alzheimer’s patients threatens to undermine our entire health-care system, or bankrupt the province. To avoid that outcome, the provinces and the federal government need to restructure our health system with an emphasis on early intervention and less costly community-based care.
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Poverty missing in budget plans
Saturday, March 27th, 2010
Mar 27 2010
While the government says it remains committed to reducing poverty, Thursday’s budget does little to move us toward that goal. In fact, there are some backward steps in the budget. For example, the government is cancelling a program that currently provides one in five social assistance recipients with extra funds to buy healthy food; it is raising welfare rates by just 1 per cent, less than projected inflation; and it fails to begin overhauling our rules-bound welfare system, which does a better job of keeping people down than lifting them up.
Tags: budget, poverty
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
A prudent budget, with two missteps
Friday, March 26th, 2010
Mar 26 2010
…the budget speech had nothing to say about the government’s poverty reduction plan, which suggests it is a low priority. The background document says the government will hike welfare rates by 1 per cent, but that will be more than offset by the elimination of the special diet supplement… the budget acknowledges the elephant in the government’s room: health, which now accounts for 46 cents of every dollar spent on provincial programs and is slated to rise to 70 cents in 12 years, crowding out spending on everything else.
Tags: budget, Health, poverty
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
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