Posts Tagged ‘budget’
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Big hurdles remain in pharmacare implementation plan
Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019
The national pharmacare advisory council’s ambitious report presents a staged, eight-year plan to reduce drug costs and make public drug coverage universal with the participation of the provinces. But there are major stumbling blocks ahead. The report is silent on how the initiative would be paid for; it proposes a convoluted and unequal federal funding transfer to encourage provincial and territorial participation; and, it makes potentially naïve assumptions about how private insurers will react to the expansion of public drug insurance.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, participation, pharmaceutical, standard of living, tax
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Ontario health quality will suffer under the Peoples Health Act
Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019
The board of Ontario Health seems to think that only front-line workers are needed to provide health care and the back-office staff responsible for measuring and comparing quality as well as holding clinical programs accountable for high quality results can be disposed of. It is naïve to think that busy clinicians can both provide care and do the data collection and analysis that quality improvement requires without back office support.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Hoping the new attorney general does the right thing
Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019
Today we are in the midst of writing a new chapter in the history of legal aid in Ontario — a system that has served as a much-emulated model of the world, with the legal clinics having played a central role of its success. A system that is now under attack, with deliberate misinformation about its lack of efficiency as the justification for its obliteration.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
The real carbon tax is the money provinces are spending on lawyers
Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019
… the Ontario court also said carbon pricing is not a tax because the money collected by Ottawa will be sent back to the provinces, with nearly all of it going to individual taxpayers, and the remainder to schools, hospitals, municipalities and small and medium-sized businesses in the five provinces on which it is or will be imposed… The Ontario ruling also makes the case for why a federal regime is necessary.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Cuts to legal aid mean worse health for vulnerable people
Tuesday, July 2nd, 2019
Many of my patients have legal needs that require expert intervention to maintain their social and medical stability… for issues ranging from family discord to accessing disability supports… Neighbourhood legal clinics… are now facing crippling funding cuts… When people are denied the ability to advocate for their legal rights, they are left with high levels of stress, in worse poverty, and in increasingly vulnerable situations. This leaves them in poorer health and puts a higher demand on the health system.
Tags: budget, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Delivery System | No Comments »
Transparency on what doctors bill OHIP informs the health-care debate
Friday, June 28th, 2019
The public benefit that comes from greater transparency around OHIP billings is clear. It will help to inform the debate about how Ontario spends its health care dollars and whether the current payment structure overvalues some medical services at the expense of others… Are we achieving the best health care outcomes for the dollars we spend? Is there a better way? … Opening up the system to public scrutiny can only help to build a stronger health-care system for patients and doctors alike.
Tags: budget, economy, Health, ideology, mental Health
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Yes, to national pharmacare – because we already paid for it
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
We are paying, in effect, three times: through federal research grants, through disease-focused charities, and then at the pharmacy. A national pharmacare program could change this if… the cost of a drug over the life of its patent was calculated to recognize the public support its development received. Manufacturers would submit a funding history with a tentative pricing. A fair rate of return would be permitted for the life of a patent based on that information.
Tags: budget, Health, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
OSAP offers have arrived, and students are stunned at the numbers
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
Lowering tuition would help all students across the province, the government has argued. But some students say reductions to grants mean they’re actually further behind. The issue has generated a Twitter storm as students posted comparisons of what they will be getting this year compared with last… Ross Romano, the new minister of training, colleges and universities, said the government is committed to restoring financial sustainability to OSAP…
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living, youth
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Ontario’s new attorney general should reverse cuts to legal aid
Monday, June 24th, 2019
The fact is, cutting funding for legal aid will further erode any hope the poor and vulnerable have of receiving justice in a system that’s already stacked against them… If he doesn’t, the fallout will be painful for the poor and immensely costly for taxpayers… who will pay for the costly incarceration of innocent people who are not going to get fair legal representation in bail hearings, criminal cases or immigration and refugee detention hearings.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Post-secondary students get the bad news about their OSAP grants
Saturday, June 22nd, 2019
While tuition fees dropped by hundreds of dollars thanks to the recent changes… OSAP funding was cut by thousands of dollars. “We all feel that education should be a right, not a privilege… It’s not something that just people that come from wealthy backgrounds (deserve)… It should be available to everyone, no matter your background.”… students and their families are going to have to reconsider whether post-secondary education is a viable option for them
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, standard of living, youth
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
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