Good afternoon.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the rest of the committee for having us here today.
My name is Dr. Danyaal Raza, and I'm a family physician here in Ottawa. I'm here on behalf of Canadian Doctors for Medicare.
We're an organization that represents physicians across Canada as well as citizens who support a strong public health care system. We conduct research, advocacy, and education activities in support of an equitable, accessible, and improved public health care system.
In regard to the federal government's next budget, we have three main recommendations for improvement.
First, we believe this government should commit to establishing a 2014 health accord.
Second, we believe the Canada Health Act should be enforced across the country.
Third, we believe the federal government should commit to a strong role in promoting health care innovation.
All three impact our ability to have an efficient and sustainable health care system that provides the best value for taxpayer money.
With respect to our first recommendation, we're concerned that the federal government has walked away from its role in a 2014 health accord. Health care is about more than dollars and cents, and our country is more than a collection of provinces.
There is a role for the federal government in health care. It helps ensure that Canadians can count on quality care wherever they live and wherever they travel within the country. Without national leadership, the quality and levels of service of health care in Canada will depend on each province, not on the universal health care system that Canadians expect to be there for them.
The 2003-2004 health accords were landmark developments in Canada. Over the past 10 years there's been mixed progress. For example, in some parts of the country there has been success in reducing wait times for certain procedures, but this has not happened uniformly across the country. There's been little progress on a national pharmaceutical strategy to reduce costs and increase access to drugs. In addition, there was weak accountability for results. The accord provided for large transfers of money to provinces without enforceable conditions for delivery outcomes.
We urge the federal government to initiate the timely development of a new 10-year health accord, negotiated jointly to ensure that it reflects the needs of all regions and also reflects the priorities that we share as Canadians. We would also add that moneys from any new accord should be conditional on adherence to the Canada Health Act.
This leads to our second recommendation, which is the need to enforce the Canada Health Act with respect to illegal extra billing. The evidence is mounting that many for-profit providers of health care are charging patients for additional services tied to their medically necessary and already publicly insured services. In some cases, private surgical facilities such as the Cambie clinic in B.C. are making millions of dollars by openly charging patients to jump the queue ahead of other needy patients on public wait-lists. We know many Canadians feel that wait times are too long, and we agree. In fact, there is evidence that wait times can improve. Allowing those with the ability to pay to jump in front of the line is not a solution.
The federal government has a responsibility to ensure that all Canadians have equitable access to care, and Canadians expect the laws of their land to be enforced. Extra billing is expressly prohibited in the Canada Health Act, and the federal government has a responsibility to work with provinces to ensure that this practice does not take place. We ask the federal government to meet this expectation.
Our final recommendation asks for federal leadership to help identify smart innovations in Canada and scale them up across the country so that our best practices are not limited to isolated projects in single hospitals or clinics. For example, in a pilot project, the Alberta Bone and Joint Health Institute was able to reduce wait times for hip and knee surgeries from 82 weeks to just 11 weeks, and with better patient outcomes. In Saskatchewan they're learning from the experience of Nova Scotians and their success with a collaborative emergency centre system in rural areas that is helping connect patients to doctors and in fact cutting wait times to see doctors from six weeks to three days.