We know that the health care system has a lot of problems. It's responsible for about 25% of your health outcomes, which is not inconsiderable. One of the big issues we see as physicians is that the health care system only covers physician visits and hospital care. There are many other things going on outside of the health care system that are difficulties for people who don't have adequate income right now. For example, we know that one in 10 Canadians cannot afford to buy their own prescription medication. So we've been advocating for some sort of pharmacare plan that would find ways to fill in those gaps. This would involve a pooling of risks between public and private plans so that every Canadian can have access to their needed medication. That's certainly a big concern and it's something outside the Canada Health Act.
The same goes for long-term care, home-based care. We know very well that if you are poor in this country, your prospects of requiring any kind of reasonable long-term care are not good. You may block up hospital beds. For example, my father has advanced dementia and I pay $6,000 a month to put him in assisted living with care. If I did not have that money, he would be sitting in a hospital bed right now at the Ottawa General Hospital and bumping the cost of the system up. These are the issues outside the current health care system that I think we need to put some public policy towards.