By Jason Clemens
and Niels Veldhuis
The Fraser Institute
Ontarians are less than two weeks away from choosing their next provincial government and polls suggest voters are looking for change, with both the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democrats leading the governing Liberals. Unfortunately, none of the three major party platforms include genuine health-care reform, which is badly needed in the province.
Jason
Clemens
Health-care spending by the Ontario government is set to reach $61.3 billion next fiscal year. It’s already the single largest area of spending, consuming 42 per cent of all provincial government program dollars.
While all the parties recognize the need for improvement, they’re all simply calling for more spending on health care rather than reform.
The Liberals call for $822 million in new hospital care and infrastructure spending, $2.1 billion for mental health, and $575 million to expand the province’s prescription drug coverage to seniors.
The NDP proposes $19 billion (over 10 years) for new hospitals and long-term care, $475 million for pharmacare, and expanding full dental coverage.
The Tories promise more long-term beds, and additional spending on mental health and incentives for doctors to locate in Northern Ontario.
Niels
Veldhuis
But none of the parties have called for fundamental reforms in how the province delivers, regulates or finances health care. This is unfortunate because while the Canada Health Act (CHA) remains an impediment to many proven reforms used in other successful universal health-care countries, there are still meaningful reforms that can be introduced within the guidelines of the CHA.
For example, private provision of publicly-covered health procedures would bring Ontario more in line with other countries that more successfully provide universal health care. On this reform, Saskatchewan offers particularly important lessons. In the late 2000s, there was increasing recognition of the province’s severe wait-times problem. In 2008, for instance, the median wait time (from general practitioner referral to treatment) for residents of that province was 28.8 weeks, the longest in the country.
The government launched the Saskatchewan Surgical Initiative (SSI) in 2010 with the goal of reducing the wait time to no more than three months by 2014.
The SSI included collaborative decision-making between health providers and a greater focus on patient interests (as opposed to provider interests).
Most critically, it included the contracting out of select day surgeries to private for-profit clinics to help expand supply. The government recognized that many Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries with universal health care accept the use of private clinics, including for-profits. And contrary to popular belief, the practice does not violate the CHA.
Strict guidelines were introduced for providers that included prohibiting any additional billing to patients. Over three years, Saskatchewan went from having one of the longest wait time averages to one of the shortest. The government’s wait-time data indicated a decline of 75 per cent in the number of patients waiting three months or longer for surgery.
The use of private, for-profit clinics also resulted in a decline in costs per procedure. A study reviewing the SSI by Janice MacKinnon, a former Saskatchewan NDP minister of finance, cited work showing that, on average, private clinics in the province delivered procedures at 26 per cent lower costs than public-sector comparables.
As Ontarians prepare to decide who will govern the province for the next four years, it’s timely to consider the need for fundamental reforms in health care.
Saskatchewan offers practical, real-world lessons on the benefits of private provision, which include lower wait times and costs in accordance with the Canada Health Act.
Jason Clemens and Niels Veldhuis are economists with the Fraser Institute.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
