SOUND OFF: B.C.’s healthcare system feeling results of earlier cuts
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By
Sound Off
Jul 6, 2022 | 9:45 AM
PEOPLE ACROSS CANADA have discovered it more and more tough to entry constant main care during the last 20 years. This can be a main downside and I perceive that folks throughout B.C. are pissed off. The challenges we’re seeing in the present day are a long time within the making and had been worsened by funding cuts to well being care made by earlier governments. However whatever the causes of our current downside, we’re dedicated to discovering options.
At a time when the previous authorities ought to have proactively doubled right down to strengthen our well being system, the BC Liberal authorities deserted its dedication to enhance well being care. As a substitute, it slashed funding, elevated MSP premiums, and privatized our healthcare companies, shedding hundreds of healthcare employees throughout the province.
Our authorities has taken concerted motion to enhance main care in B.C. and to reinvest again into well being companies, however the pandemic has solely elevated the pressure. Strikingly, the federal authorities used to pay 50 per cent of public healthcare prices to the provinces by the Canada Well being Switch. Now, the federal authorities’s share is simply 22 per cent. In 2011, the federal Conservative authorities introduced plans to cut back annual will increase to the well being switch. Kevin Falcon, the present BC Liberal chief, was finance minister on the time, and he was the one provincial finance minister anyplace in Canada to assist the cuts. Those self same cuts have value British Columbians billions in healthcare funding, and that’s why Premier Horgan is now main a coordinated effort with different provinces to get Ottawa to pay its fair proportion.
This large underfunding created a scarcity of cohesion in our healthcare system. It meant folks had been paying extra and getting much less. Whereas we’ve got massively elevated well being investments since forming authorities, we acknowledge that there’s way more to do. We’re listening carefully to these on the entrance traces so we will implement options that may result in long-term success.