Mr. Speaker, it looks like this is going to go on all day. Of course I did not say that. What I said was that a good portion of health care in Canada is paid for by private funds. Anyone who has bought a prescription for antibiotics for their kids and shelled out $10 or $15 for it has paid for the health of their family out of their own funds.
If I go to a chiropractor I have pay for that because it is not covered under general medical services. My back is being helped but I have had to pay for that repeatedly.
When people get a massage, they have to pay for that themselves. Even if the doctor has prescribed it, it is not covered under the medical plan.
What I suggested was that when people have to pay out of their own pockets, as they often do already for those kinds of services, we should look at something in the tax system that would allow people to save, like we do for retirement or for education, the private portion that we already pay for, not new things, should be looked after by the government in a way that encourages and allows people to save, free of the tax man, something that is specific to their health care. That is what I was talking about.
The leadership candidate, who the member spoke about, is frustrated with the current state of the health care system. I guess it is a case of walking a mile in his shoes. He is an emergency room doctor who has spent many years on the front lines both here and overseas delivering health care to all kinds of people. He spends the summers working on aboriginal reserves, in very difficult situations, giving of his time and providing services where no one else will go. What he sees is a deterioration of the health care system that is very frustrating to him. He has seen people lying on gurneys who are not receiving treatment, and no matter what he, as a doctor, prescribes, nothing happens to them.
What that leadership candidate says is that we have to talk about options. I have thrown some options out this morning, but as a medical doctor and an emergency room specialist, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca has seen firsthand unnecessary suffering and even death because people have not had access to timely health care.