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Why hasn’t medical care in Canada included teeth?
Saturday, November 12th, 2022
… when Canada’s Medical Care Act was passed in 1966, only physician services were covered — even though the 1964 Royal Commission on Health Services report (considered the blueprint for Canada’s universal health insurance program) had recommended free dentistry for all children and eventually for all adults. The Canada Dental Benefit, which received parliamentary approval on October 27, will provide free dental care for uninsured Canadians with an annual family income of less than $90,000, starting with children under 12 in December 2022.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living, youth
Posted in Health History | 1 Comment »
What a new food-bank reports tells us about deep poverty
Thursday, October 20th, 2022
“We are failing people every step of the way”… Policy-makers have a selection of choices before them to slow or halt that cascade… but they boil down to this: either give people access to more money to buy food or help the charitable sector, like food banks, with more resources to bridge the gap. Right now, Yalnizyan adds, “the governments are doing none of the above.”
Tags: budget, disabilities, featured, housing, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Policy Context | No Comments »
‘It breaks my heart’: Ontarians on social assistance are struggling even more amid inflation
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
ODSP recipients recently got a 5 per cent rate increase. But advocates say that doesn’t make up for decades of neglect — or account for sky-high inflation… The PCs have repeatedly said that they will tie future rate increases for ODSP to inflation in law — each rate increase would, therefore, in some way keep up with the actual buying power of what recipients get in each cheque… At time of publication, no legislation to this effect is before the house.
Tags: disabilities, housing, ideology, jurisdiction, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Policy Context | No Comments »
How will Canada expand a health-care system that’s already struggling?
Saturday, September 10th, 2022
Everyone should have access to routine dental care and vision care and necessary medications — and other things, like mental-health supports and physiotherapy… This is important on humanitarian grounds. It would also, though, optimize the primary-care system: a person who is kept out of hospital by proper dental care means one more bed available for someone who truly needs it.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, participation, pharmaceutical, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Flattening Ontario’s mental-health curve
Monday, July 25th, 2022
A navigator is someone who guides a patient through the system. The system is incredibly complex and not intuitive. There are also cultural barriers, language barriers; you might be dealing with ableism. It might just mean connecting them to the right professionals in the community to keep them out of hospital. Mental health and substance issues are best handled in the community, with supports. The hospitals are not the best place for this kind of care.
Tags: Health, mental Health
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
Ontario’s new gig-work bill might as well be written on DoorDash letterhead
Monday, March 7th, 2022
The Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act may look as if it’s intended to bring app-based employers in line — but it’s not the change we need… Changing the law to define these workers as employees would obviate the need for any of these proposed changes. It would enshrine the rights of these workers along with those of everyone else.
Tags: economy, ideology, jurisdiction, rights, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
What do we want our health-care system to do, and how much are we willing to pay?
Wednesday, January 12th, 2022
In late 2019, the Ontario Hospital Association published a report touting the sector’s history of efficiency while warning that the efficiencies had come at a cost. It noted that, if Ontario funded its hospital system just to the level of the Canadian average, that would cost another $4 billion annually. But almost all Canadian provinces have relatively few beds per capita compared with other wealthy countries…
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical, privatization
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
The cost of living is rising. So why aren’t social-assistance rates?
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021
Year-over-year, Canada’s Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation, rose 4.4 per cent — the highest rate since 2003 — in September… Shelter is up 4.8 per cent, and food is up 3.9 per cent. But ODSP benefits haven’t increased since the Doug Ford government halved a planned 3 per cent bump three years ago, saying the previous government had committed to spending money the province didn’t have… ODSP payments now are worth less than they were 17 years ago.
Tags: disabilities, jurisdiction, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Policy Context | 1 Comment »
Home child care should be affordable, high-quality — and licensed
Monday, October 18th, 2021
… we propose a system under which every home child-care provider serving more than one unrelated child has to be individually licensed. A provincewide coalition of independent home child-care providers argued precisely for this path of individual licensing when Ontario modernized the legislation governing child care in 2014. In addition to oversight of every home child-care provider, our model involves substantial support for quality improvements for all home child care.
Tags: child care, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Canada needs a social contract for mental health
Wednesday, August 25th, 2021
… the Canada Emergency Response Benefit was arguably the most important mental-health innovation of the pandemic because it decreased financial uncertainty, demonstrating how important government can be in improving mental health. The Canadian Medical Association has calculated that 85 per cent of our risk of illness is linked to social factors such as housing, unemployment, poverty, systemic racism, and lack of access to social supports and health services. These are the types of stresses that are interacting with COVID-19 to drive our mental-health and substance-use crisis.
Tags: economy, mental Health, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
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