Mr. Speaker, Bill C-95 is really not much more than a bill to change the name of the Department of Health. On that basis it is surprising that we will spend so much time debating it. If I asked a high school class how long they thought it would take to change the name of a department, they would tell me it would probably take a minute.
I see this debate being used by my colleagues as an opportunity to talk about health care in a broader sense and I will seize that opportunity too. This bill is what my House leader said it was a few moments ago when he said it was a pretty thin soup on the legislative agenda we have seen lately.
Let me start my comments about health care in general by making a statement I would like to have emblazoned across the forehead of my colleagues across the way as coming from the health critic of the Reform Party. I will say it over and over again until they finally do recognize and plainly hear what I am saying: Medicare is our best social program. Medicare is the program I think we should protect with all our resources.
Let me follow that by saying U.S. style medicare, U.S. style medicine is absolutely unacceptable to Canadians and to Reformers. There is no desire anywhere in Canada to move toward a system like the U.S. has. How many times can I say that? How many times can I express it? How many times can I emblazon it on the foreheads of my colleagues?
Our public system which is tax supported, which is universal, which is comprehensive, which is accessible to all and which is publicly administered, is truly unparalleled. Medicare is our best social program. This social program however has some cracks in it. The cracks must be talked about and addressed. If we simply stand
idly by and let the best social program we have break down, we have not done what we should be doing as legislators.
I beg my colleagues across the way to stop the rhetoric. I beg them to stop this nonsense about a U.S. style two tier system. I beg them instead to listen carefully to the actual proposals I make. I beg them to actually debate with me those proposals line by line instead of with buzzwords, instead of with rhetoric, instead of with platitudes. Please debate the concerns.
Why does our medicare system have cracks? What are the cracks I see? I see an aging population in Canada. Each one of us knows that as we age, medical expenses go up. In the last three years of life, 70 per cent of our health care expenditures are spent.
I see new innovative technology coming along that was never envisaged when medicare came on the scene. I see organ transplants, joint replacements, things we never dreamed about when health care was set up. Some of those things are profoundly expensive. Some are very difficult to fit into the framework we have.
Finally what are probably driving the cracks, and I wish they were not, are the funding shortfalls. We are in a position now where the federal government is spending over $1,200 per person to service the debt, that is servicing the interest on our debt annually while we spend $268 per person on medicare.
If nothing else, those three things which are happening in medicare have produced profound cracks. Ignore them, pay no attention to them and our most valuable social program will not just have cracks, it will implode. It will not survive.
If anyone takes from that that I say medicare is finished or done, I will say it again: Medicare is our most valuable social program. It needs support. It needs protection. It does not need U.S. style two tier changes. How many times must I say it?
There are two routes to travel in health care changes. Surely we know that health care changes must come but there are two routes to travel as I see it.
One route is to ration the procedures we do. That is avenue number one which we are on today, the rationing of services. We can ration by waiting in line. We can wait so long that we scream, or sadly in some cases, we can wait so long that we die. Rationing by waiting.
We can cap budgets and say that this is all we can afford. Anything beyond that point will not be done. We can have 30 operating room days instead of 100 operating room days. We can close beds. We can actually remove them from the system. It is being done. We can fire nurses and say to them: "You cannot do your nursing any longer. Step outside the system. Maybe you would be just fine as an accountant". That is one route and the one I am afraid we are on today, the rationing of services. I decry that and say it will not suffice.
The other route we can travel is if our medicare system does not meet the needs of an individual, they should have the choice to step beyond the public system and access something else. That is where I think we should go. Please remember that does not mean tossing our good public system away. It means our tax supported system will maintain itself, but if medicare does not meet the needs of an individual patient, they should be able to step outside. I can only explain this best by giving some examples.
A little girl by the name of Stephanie, a tiny patient, has adenoid problems and fluid in her ears. She is in pain. This is not a life threatening problem but she cannot hear as well as she would like. She is constantly concerned. She goes in to get her antibiotic and the specialist tells her parents that Stephanie really needs to have her adenoids removed and the fluid drained from her ears. Her parents ask the doctor how soon this can be done. It is an eight-month wait in Nepean for that procedure today.
Stephanie is not in the worst difficulty, but what happens for the eight months she has to wait? She is on antibiotic every three weeks, and the antibiotic cost is about $40. There is actually some extra discomfort for her, so she misses play school. When she misses play school mom has to stay home from work or have a babysitter come in. Those things are economic, and I would set them aside and say that they are okay. But for Stephanie herself, the pain and disruption is there. Her parents ask what choice they have. The public medicare system is going to provide her service in eight months. Is there nothing that can be done? Yes, there is something a Nepean couple could do today. They could go to Rochester. They considered very carefully going to Rochester for their sweetheart to get her adenoids out.
There is another choice. I am sad to say that it does not exist in Ontario now. The choice is a little clinic in Alberta. This clinic is run by an ear, nose, and throat surgeon exactly of the same capability as hers. He got ticked off with the fact that the waiting list in Alberta was eight months. He said there had to be another way. There were not enough bed opening times for him to bring kids into the hospital. This is not a hard procedure. The facilities will cost him about $30,000, and he can get the operating room microscope, which is not that difficult to sterilize. He could do it in his office with an anaesthetist and the equipment for that. He wondered if there was a demand for this.
Today in Alberta he is doing that. The cost is $125 out of the patient's pocket. The waiting time is two weeks. Little Stephanie in pain is given the choice. This is what I want. I want Stephanie's parents to have the choice. If the public system and the eight-month wait is okay for Stephanie and okay for them, so be it. If they say that it is not acceptable to them, I want them desperately to be able to access that facility. And it should not be in Rochester; it should be in Ottawa.
If there is anyone in the Chamber who would deny that sweet little girl that choice, I want them to stand now. I cannot imagine a Canadian who would do that.
Thin edge of the wedge? Our public system cratering because of the potential of choice? Find me the country in this world that has a public system like Canada's and a complementary private clinic that has caused the public system to crater and I will sit down. There is no such country.
Let me take the other side of the coin now. My mother, who is living in Alberta, recently had a cataract operation. She had a choice. There is a clinic in Alberta that would do her cataract operation for $1,250 out of pocket, with a very short waiting time of two weeks. The waiting time in the public system for her was four months. "Twelve hundred and fifty bucks, boy, that's a lot of loot", says my mom. "How bad are my eyes? Not so bad at all. I can still watch TV. I can still read the newspaper. I think I will wait. I think I can easily wait for four months." And she did. Her surgery was performed trouble free. This was a public system providing for her needs in the way it should.
If there is no demand in Canada for options outside medicare, there will be no such clinics springing up. Interestingly enough, in a country I am familiar with, some of the private clinics, these choice clinics that have sprung up, have now gone bankrupt because the public system has become so efficient, provided all the services, and pushed them aside.
Why do Canadians not have more confidence in this most valuable social program to say that it will crater if some choice springs up? How is it that this most valuable social program would not survive if there were choice and if the only choice were to go to Europe? It makes no sense to me whatever.
I talked about how funding goes down because of debt. What happens if funding from the government drops so low that there is not enough in a community?
Tomorrow I am going to my twin riding of Saskatoon to speak to the law faculty. I have already had the opportunity of being there. I found out that in Saskatoon the provincial and federal funds have given them no capital expenditures for the last three years-none. They said they had some things the people in Saskatoon want, and they raised through foundations $2 million-from corporations, individuals, and people who are involved in the health care field doing projects. They put those funds into capital improvements: equipment and new technology.
The public will not stand for an inferior product in health. Health is more important to Canadians than any other thing we have or we can give them.
I say again that the individuals in this country who will not debate this issue straight up with Reformers who are willing to talk openly about the cracks-not the explosions, not the breakdown, not a crisis, but cracks in our most valuable social program-are ideologically driven and not driven by care, not driven by health needs, and not driven by common sense.
I am going to end my discourse today by saying that medicare is our most valuable social program. The biggest threat to medicare in Canada is politicians who wrap themselves in some kind of a flag and will not truly address the issues.
