Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services and in follow-up to my Member’s statement today. Question number one: How far behind are we on issuing new health care cards to residents who have applied for them? How many applications are in limbo at this time?
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. There are some issues with mailing, but I think that the majority of the people that went for renewal have had their health cards renewed without any issues.
There are some issues. To answer her question of how far behind we are in this is difficult for me. I can say that we did change the system just a bit by mailing out postcards as opposed to forms, and that has caused a little bit of an issue. Aside from wrong addresses, I think we’re fairly up to speed on our renewals.
Because this is a new system and the expiry coincides with people’s birthdates, I would like to ask the Minister if there is a grace period that’s being extended to someone. If they show up at any kind of a medical service provider and their health care card is expired, will they still be provided services without having to apply for them and then be reimbursed or anything like that? Is there a grace period?
Unfortunately, if you show up with expired health care, you will not get insured coverage. However, you do have four months after that grace period to renew your health care card.
If somebody’s birthday was on January 15th and the applications for renewal of health care cards had not gone out, and with the backlog and number of cards that were not processed right away, is the Minister saying that if you’re an NWT resident, and you have an NWT health care card, and you show up for service, that you are not going to be provided that service during this transition phase into a new system?
On this new system where we moved to birthdates, we have about 2,000 per month. The majority of them are processed, yes. A lot of the mailings went out after people’s birthdays, on the 21st of January actually, so we do have a bit of a glitch in the system. But, in reality, we didn’t see it as a huge issue, that most people will have their cards renewed. But if they don’t have their cards renewed then, yes, they will not get the service provided at that time. They can get a service and they can pay for it or else they can quickly get the card renewed.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That’s very discouraging to hear, because I don’t think the department was on their game on the implementation of this new health care card system. I’m particularly worried about students that maybe hold NWT health care cards but they’re down in Alberta or someplace else, that this Minister is now telling us in this House that they would not receive services. I could see in the Northwest Territories people probably know people and it would be a lot easier, but I’m particularly worried about people outside of the territory who have birthdates early on in the year. Probably by the time we get to November or December it will all be worked out, but there were glitches, there were problems, and I would like there to be some kind of a grace period where people could be provided the services and they will get their cards eventually. I’d like the Minister to explain to us why that would not be possible.
We began a media campaign in December to advise people that we’re moving to the system where their health care card expires on their birthday. These are health care cards that would have been in place for three years, and then expiring on their birthdays starting this year and then more in the coming years. What has happened is, because there have been issues where there are indications that individuals that are holding health care cards that are not eligible that are outside the province, we wanted to have a clean process when we transfer into the new system that we’re requiring that people have health care cards, eligible health care cards in order to get coverage. Then we can deal with the individual cases. If MLAs know of individual cases where this has become an issue, then the department is prepared to deal with those on a one-off basis.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
