Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The issue I’m going to raise today is the management of health care dollars in our system. Recently I raised an issue with the way the Department of Health and Social Services is not billing the appropriate customers and that’s the insurance companies. I raise the issue particularly about the fact that insurance companies are getting away with what I would define as a scandal. They are allowing the public health care dollars to pay for services that their clients are already paying for. In other words, we’re subsidizing the insurance companies. This applies to federal employees in many cases. Again, the issue is that people, when they show up at the hospitals or health care system, aren’t asked if they are covered by somebody else, which they’re paying for.
I’ve recently been told by some doctors that they have been told they have to go through their individual files for their patients and put sticky notes on the individual case files to make sure they are carried forward in electronic form when they move to the new health care clinic. They look at me and go, what’s wrong with the management of health care dollars? Once again it seems confusing. Why not just hire a summer student to scan the whole file? In other words, their point to me was why are you getting a doctor to look at a file and putting it into the electronic system when you can hire a summer student at a fraction of the price. Poor management of health dollars.
I’ve had a number of constituents come to me about our health care agreement with Nunavut. Many times our system will offer priority to the Nunavut system over our NWT citizens. We have to discuss the issue of the fact that we don’t bill properly for them. More dollars being left on the table.
How much more does this government have to go in the red ink before we start to realize that management of health dollars needs to be taken very seriously?
Recently the Minister released her issue and direction on health care benefits, but I’m not convinced that the management of health care is taking their stewardship as seriously as possible. Before we start chipping away at supplementary health benefits, we have to take a serious look at how we’re managing our own books. These few examples that I’ve provided should be telling people we need to go back to the books and start thinking about how we’re managing our health care dollars. I’ll have questions for the Minister later today.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
