I'd like to follow up on a Member’s statement I made last week on the health care card imbalance issue, where there are more health care cards in our system than there are people in the N.W.T. With the pressures to reduce costs, this area should be seriously examined.
I was very pleased, though, during my research, to hear that the Department of Health and Social Services and the Minister’s office were aware of this issue. I’m really interested to know what steps are being taken, to date, to address this situation.
Mahsi.
I thank the Member for the question. We are taking steps, both on a long-term and short-term basis.
In the longer term, we will be sending out renewal forms for health care cards in 2009. We're looking at options in detail about what extra measures we could put in place to verify the residency of health care card holders, and what kind of documents we could ask for that, and to meet all the technical requirements in doing so.
We will be looking at possibly asking for tax files as well as asking for physical residential addresses in cases where the address is written down as PO box numbers.
In the short term, the department is already auditing files to look at the patterns of claims being made, where the services are being done and where the products are being bought. If many of those are happening outside of the jurisdiction for any length of time, they are being re-looked at, to verify the residency.
There are many other things being considered to make sure that we take measures to balance those numbers.
We understand that there will always be that discrepancy, but we just want to make sure that those are for the right reasons.
Of course, there are long-term and short-term residents here. It has always been felt that some received health cards because they had lived here for six months, got employment, and now reside somewhere else but still work in the mines. I don't know if the Minister’s office is able to reconcile that difference if they actually live here, like you said.
For the most part, some of it will be easy. Some living in my communities, like in Nahanni Butte and Jean Marie, are life-long residents. I think it would be easier to assess those. But determining the people that are not living here and if there are such people utilizing our much-needed resources for our Northern people…. That is the issue. How is the Minister going to continue to address that in the short term once again? Mahsi.
Absolutely, I don’t think any of us want to be paying for health care benefits for other than those who are residents here.
We do have a large transient population. We get about 150 applications a week for health care cards. So we are building in a process to make sure that we do monthly audits. There are audits being done of all these files on a daily basis and a monthly basis to look at any kind of pattern of out-of-jurisdiction claims, whether of services or medication for extended periods of time. Whether there’s inactive/activity on file for any length of time, we want to make sure that those residents are still living in the North.
Many of those transient populations use PO box numbers as their address, and this is why we want to put the physical address as being required information. Also, we’re looking at the possibility of requiring tax files to prove their residency in our 2009 renewal process. So that’s precisely the reason why we’re looking at these options.
Is there an existing system right now, Mr. Speaker, wherein the department can track those people that actually are non-resident, or is there a way to determine how many people that are using our existing cards are not from here?
All the cards, the people who are registered with health cards, are assumed to be residents of the North unless they are proven otherwise. I could advise the House that we get reports from Blue Cross on a regular basis for all out-of-town claims where the services are purchased from outside. We do look at inactive and irregular files to make sure that those claims are from people who live here. We do understand that there is a possibility that among those 5,000 claims we have, there is a possibility. So we’re strengthening our check and balance systems to make sure that all those who have a health care card currently are active and residents of the N.W.T.
Just for the record, I think my research said there were 46,000 health care cards and 42,000 residents. Perhaps the Minister can clarify that if she’s got the numbers in front of her.
As of October 2007 there were 41,425 residents, according to the latest census. As of February 6, 2008, we have 45,991 health care cards. I can advise you that in the last health care renewal in 2005, we did receive 5,000 health care cards returned, because when the health care cards go out there is a specific instruction that says it cannot be forwarded outside of the jurisdiction. Many of them are cancelled. We expect that we probably will have that this time around, but in the short term, we’re making sure that all claims are from residents and that they in fact live in the Northwest Territories.
