Madam Chair, I thank the hon. member for her questions. Even though she is no longer my health critic I thank her very much for her ongoing interest and commitment in the area of health and health care.
I must disagree with the hon. member. Mr. Romanow's report provided much of the guidance in terms of the first ministers accord that ultimately was reached on February 4. It will continue to inspire many of the actions, and form many of the actions that we take and other governments take as we move forward in the months and years ahead. But just to give some specific examples, Mr. Romanow talked about the importance of primary health care reform. He talked about the importance of home care. We must start to look at our health care system as a continuum of care and home care needs to be included as an insured service.
What are we doing? We are starting with post acute home care and palliative home care. We are starting to develop that continuum of health care and expanding the basket of things that are covered by provincial health plans. We are looking at the area of catastrophic drug coverage. Mr. Romanow talked about that as did Senator Kirby. It has been identified for us by a lot of Canadians.
Many of the breakthrough drugs and therapies can cost thousands of dollars a month. That is just too much for some families. As we said 50 years or 40 years ago about the fact that we should not have to sell our home or give up our entire life savings to be able to access an acute care hospital, we should not have to mortgage a home, give it up or sell all our life savings to be able to afford something like a $10,000 a month arthritis therapy, for example.
That is why we are moving on catastrophic drug coverage with the provinces and the territories. The Romanow Commission formed the health accord to a very significant degree. We are moving on the health council. The health council is only one example of the broader principle of accountability which everybody agrees is absolutely key. We are building on the work of CIHI and PIRC, the predictions indicators project.
We will create a health council and expand our prediction indicators. There will be expanded reporting and annual reporting in relation to important aspects of the health accord. It will provide Canadians with the information they need to be able to compare how their health care system is performing in their city, with another city in their province, or a city across the country.
We are reaching a point, based on the good work that is done at the provincial and territorial level, and our own level, where we can now actually compare apples and apples in the health care system. That is really important.
Mr. Romanow also talked about the importance of high end diagnostic equipment. We are still, in relation to some areas, a little bit below the OECD average, but because of what we did in September 2000 we are much closer to that OECD average as it relates to high end diagnostics. We have created a medical equipment fund that responds to that need but also has greater flexibility.
If we talk to a health minister from a province like Prince Edward Island, he would say there are MRIs for 100,000 people and there is no need for another MRI, but that there is a need for beds and basic x-ray machines. That is why we have expanded the medical equipment fund to accommodate those legitimate real needs on the front lines of health care. We have also expanded that fund to permit training because even in well off provinces like my own, Alberta, the health minister would say that there are enough MRIs, but that they are not run to the maximum utility because there are not enough trained technicians and radiologists to maximize the utility. We have increased the flexibility to permit training for either new technicians or radiologists and to retrain existing technicians and radiologists.
I am not here to suggest to the hon. member we accept--