Sandy Lee

Because, Mr. Speaker, this is the non-insured program and the non-insured program is not where everybody gets service, regardless of their ability to pay. That’s insured service. Mr. Speaker, we are looking at including people who are excluded and asking those on top of the income threshold to make a contribution.

Mr. Speaker, the Member is concerned about high cost of drug expenditures and we know that there are some outliers and there are some people on the border that will be hard hit. So we are working on and those things are addressed by a cap. So that’s something that we need to address...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I did hear about the situation that the Member is describing and we are investigating that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; there is a provision there that would allow me to go back to the Cabinet for revision. We heard and analyzed and reviewed the feedback that we got from the public, and based on the analysis we had, we did not conclude that we had to go back to Cabinet for revision, but we did go to the Cabinet with options on what we have heard. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member is aware, when we went to public consultation on this in April we just wanted to talk about the idea of it. Then people asked for specific options for income threshold and we offered $30,000 threshold to start and then $50,000. Assuming that the income threshold is at $50,000 for single and moving up progressively, we believe that this program will still provide 80 percent of the people a very good coverage of extended health. Thank you.

Given the contentious and difficult issue we are dealing with, I don’t think we could have everybody agree to the proposals being put forward and it can’t be about coming up with a program that everybody is happy with, especially if you are realigning programs. At the end of the day, government has to make some choices and we have to make decisions together about how do we make sure that we have this program that includes the people that are currently excluded, minimizes the impact as much as possible and to see how we make this program not eat up other programs unreasonably, because as Member...

Mr. Speaker, we have provided the information that we have been using. If the Member has that information that she would like to get, I would be happy to accommodate that. I don’t know what she means by... I guess she is talking about a table with 100 different ideas.

Mr. Speaker, as I have said already, we are not inventing a new wheel. This is a commonly used model everywhere in the country. We have designed our program more fairly and generous than anything in the market, other than Nunavut. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is absolutely an essential part of discussions to discuss how does this relate to core health service. Mr. Speaker, maybe the Members think $8.5 million is a small amount of money. I would like to hear from the other side about how do we find that. Eight and a half million dollars every year is not a small amount of money. That would be lots of core services, Mr. Speaker.

The fact of the matter is the health care issue now is a number one issue for Canadians; all jurisdictions in Canada. Ontario is projecting that it will spend 55 percent of their budget on health services in the next two...

Thank you. As the Member knows, this has been consulted, and studied, and analysed. We have the final proposal out here, Mr. Speaker. My preference is to work with the Members and see how to make this workable. There was a question about the fact that MLA Abernethy raised, and I think MLA Groenewegen raised it too, we don’t want to have a system where everybody dumps their insurance. The program as it exists now, because we cover universally to anybody who is over 60 or with a chronic condition, we have a system where everybody drops their health insurance. We have one of the lowest rates of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And we have heard that concern. As the Members might remember, the first time when we came out with this proposal, the implementation plan, was that there would be two types of different programs and the income cut-off was $45,000. Everybody told us that that was not workable and we have to make a more flexible program. This is why we have revised the program so that income threshold starts at $50,000 for a single person and about $70,000 for a couple. But if you have children, the threshold goes up, up to the point of $170,000 to $190,000.

Mr. Speaker, no other program...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The expected cost to the government over the next four years is $8,539,702 next year, $8,824,108 the year after, $9,341,402 the year after, and about $9,893,970 for the year of 2013-14, understanding that when you’re talking about health care costs, you’re talking about estimates because it’s demand driven, it’s whoever walks in the door. But, Mr. Speaker, we expect that the new program would cost around $8.5 to $9.8 million every year.