Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to sort of change the tack of the questions here a little bit for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Mr. Speaker, we have a process issue here. If the policy to change the supplementary health benefits was adopted in the previous government, and if it is now being implemented in this government, what opportunity do we have to represent the views and concerns of our constituents to stop this from being implemented in its current format?
Mr. Speaker, we have about another five days of this Legislature sitting, this is due to be implemented before we come back here to sit again, but there’s nothing coming forward from this side of the House that gives us an opportunity to have a vote, and even if we were having a vote, the Minister has said today she can’t even answer us to tell us how much this is going to cost. Like, normally if we vote on things in this House it’s based on the principle of the service or the program or the infrastructure, and there’s a dollar amount attached to it. So we’ve said how much does the current Supplementary Health Program cost? How much will the revised Supplementary Health Program cost? We can’t even get those kind of numbers. We don’t even have a vote. This really is putting consensus government at risk here, I would suggest.
Consensus government doesn’t work if we, representing the numbers of people that we represent on this side of the House, are bringing the voice of our constituents to this table and there’s nothing to even vote on. So what do we have at our disposal? What can we do to stop this before the implementation date? Thank you.
The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
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.
Thank you. Okay, and thank you for those numbers. That’s the first time I’ve personally heard those numbers. Mr. Speaker, do those numbers take into account the opportunities that we have discussed here for people who are in the $50,000 or lower to opt out of third-party insurance programs? Does that take that into consideration? Because it’s fine to say, well, we’ll look at that after the fact, but I would suggest that’s like looking at it after, you know, closing the door after the horses are out of the barn here. These are the kinds of things that need to be considered before, before you implement a policy and not afterwards, and this is why we’re saying we need to take the time to make sure we get this right, before we run with it. I don’t know why the Minister doesn’t agree to defer this until we have something that we can agree to. This is consensus government.
Thank you. We do have time to agree on things. Requiring people to get third-party, we could make that as part of the program and we can do that right now and you don’t have to study that for a year or two months.
Mr. Speaker, the Member asked does this take into consideration those who will drop out of third-party. Not in specific dollars, but neither does it include people now because their income is higher or because they have other third-party options that they could use that and the savings that the government would get if that had happened. So, Mr. Speaker, no, it doesn’t, and when you are budgeting health programs you can’t be right down to the dollars because we do know and Members have been talking about drugs or equipment or anything. So this is the best estimate we have for the cost. Thank you.
Thank you. The Minister has clearly said this is not about cost savings and the numbers that she had put forward with an escalation value on them, and yet why are we mixing this up with core health services? I get the impression that Members on this side of the House are trying to lobby Members on this side, somehow leading to believe that there’s some question between our ability to deliver core health services to Colville Lake or any of these other communities where, you know, they need nurses and front-line workers, are trying to connect this to the supplementary health benefits. It is absolutely a red herring.
This government, you want to talk about priorities, this government should make core health in those communities a priority, quite irrelevant from what’s happening with supplementary health benefits, and if they don’t, they need to go back and look at some of the things they’ve got on the books that they think are a priority, because I think some of them are unnecessary expenditures. Let me say it that way to be kind and polite.
Mr. Speaker, why is the Minister, let me ask her, why is the Minister trying to tie the delivery of core health services in our communities to this issue of supplementary health, given those numbers that she just read out to me?
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 years. Quebec is projecting they’ll spend 60 percent of their dollars. Yes, we could cover all the core health, we could have nurses and doctors or whatever in every community, we could spend on medical travel, everything, all the things that we need to do we could spend 50 percent of our budget on health care. But, Mr. Speaker, the fact is in government, in the Northwest Territories, our people rely on government more than probably in Ontario. They need us for lots of different things. Yes, there might be a waste here and there, but the fact of the matter is, I don’t know why I keep saying that, but our Health and Social Services budget is, like, $370 million. In the last 10 years our budget doubled by 500 percent. Health and Social Services budget went up by 98 percent, but our population only grew by 6 percent. Thank you.
Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister states the obvious. The costs of health care are going up proportionately across the board. So why would we want to take supplementary health benefits and make that the target and say that’s not priority of this government? It’s going up across the board, whether you’re talking about front-line services, supplementary health benefits, pharmaceuticals, diagnostic procedures, new medical science, it’s going up, that’s the way it is. We can’t really stop that train. People are living longer, thankfully, and there are more ways to be treated in the medical system, thankfully. So when we talk about the priorities of this government, why do you want take supplementary health benefits and pick on that particular one thing?
Mr. Miltenberger, I read in the media, wants to build a $2.5 million liquor store in Hay River. Is that a priority of the people of the Northwest Territories, Mr. Speaker? Anyway, I’d like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services why is the supplementary health benefits going to be the target of this government’s restraint measures when she’s just said everything is proportionally going up and only targeting a certain group of people? 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 that should justify, that they pay something and nobody’s going to be without this access. Even at the highest income level they will get 45 percent covered. And if they have insurance, yes, access that insurance, because why shouldn’t we do that as a government, Mr. Speaker?
The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
