Sandy Lee

As I indicated earlier, suggestions such as how do we minimize the opportunity for our people to dump their insurance, I think we should put our heads together to see how we could do that and we should look into that, Mr. Speaker. We are going to work through this because we know that there’s a time limit to this and I’m willing to work with the Members about how to improve this. There is a challenge to expanding the program to those who need it, without making some changes within. Thank you.

As I indicated in the House, every health authority, every health profession, professionals have a very strict protocol on patient records and medical information and they are to follow those protocols. When there are situations like this as sometimes does happen, then you have to investigate and work with the Privacy Commissioner to make sure those breaches don’t happen again and we are doing that with the latest information. Thank you.

I’m sure if I read all of those 3,000, which I will, I probably know almost all of them. This is not impersonal to me. This is not just an issue that we’re talking about. This is very near and dear to me, as well. I talked to the people. I know who was at those meetings. I know people who are writing me. I’ve known them for all of my life here. I understand that this is a very, very pressing issue and dear issue, Mr. Speaker.

So we will continue to work on this package. We have done everything we can to… We have done a lot of work. The Department of Health and Social Services spent a majority...

Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is, the Minister and this Cabinet and this Legislature has to consider supplementary health benefits in the context. As the Member for Sahtu has mentioned, and others, the government is responsible for insured benefits as well as non-insured. Supplementary health is non-insured. The government has a priority to use its money on insured services. For non-insured services, it is to come up with a program that is as fair and as equitable as possible. We have to realize that there is some personal investment that has to be made into this program. We are asking...

We are suggesting a cap that we are discussing with the committee. Thank you.

Because, Mr. Speaker, we are far from aiming at anything low. I am going to table this Slave River Journal article written by a small newspaper agency in Fort Smith. They took their time to do a cross-country survey on what is available. Even the Yukon has a program for seniors that are over 65. Every program is income tested. Every program has deductibles. Why do we have to compare with the rest of Canada?

The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, health care is important. We need to be able to fund it. We need to focus our energy on core health. When we are talking about delivering programs in...

Mr. Speaker, I think the better way for me to provide the information that she is looking for is if she could give me the questions.

Mr. Speaker, we looked at the premiums. We looked at the deductibles, using the deductibles. We looked at different income models. I know the general public out there want to know what analysis have you done to do universal versus charging cold payment. Mr. Speaker, we have done that. If the Member wants to have that information, I would be happy to provide that to her. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we are not targeting this and we have said this is not a cost-cutting measure. It is a sustainability issue, Mr. Speaker. Each department has a certain amount of money and we have a situation where we have a program that is mandated, that’s not legislated, it’s not core service. We do want to help people. We do want to help the seniors. We do want to help the low income people. We do want to help those with high costs of drugs. But we are asking -- and we have a very, very generous program -- we are asking for those people who can access insurance elsewhere or who have an income...

Thank you. Obviously government and the House hears the people and we make decisions and take actions according to what we heard and in the interest of all the people that we serve. I think we’ve had much discussion about that already. I need to answer MLA Ramsay’s question...and I just lost my thought. Sorry, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, as the Member knows, the government has presented the latest proposal. We are meeting with the committee. I was advised that we will have more meetings on that. If there are specific issues that we could work on to improve what we have, we still have time to do that, Mr. Speaker.

I just want to note that, in the NWT, I know we could always come up with the outliers, but on average in the Northwest Territories claims are about 2,816 claims are less than $5,000, 195 claims are a little over $5,000 and about 86 are less than $10,000. So, yes, we could always look at outliers and...