Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement today I was raising issue with what I define as a poor usage of health care dollars, and I certainly hope it’s not a fact that people don’t care about the usage of health care dollars. But, Mr. Speaker, the management and the organization of these health care dollars seems to be a bit of a challenging question here.
Mr. Speaker, I’d like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services what has she done from the point of view of the context of waste busters to ensure that we’re getting the best value for our health care dollars before we start implementing changes to supplementary health benefits. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before I answer his question I need to correct some of the things that he stated. First, that somehow through private insurers the government can charge any companies for providing core service. In Canada, the Canadian government and the provincial and territorial governments are responsible for core services and we couldn’t recoup that from a private insurance company. Any private insurance company that offers benefits will be supplementary to the core service.
Secondly, that Nunavut residents have a prior service. That is misleading, Mr. Speaker. All the governments across the country -- and I’m not saying intently, I just want to correct the facts -- all provinces and territories have an agreement with each other that we treat other provinces. That’s part of the Canada Health Act; it speaks to portability and that if somebody from Nunavut walks in, we will take care of them. We get great service from Alberta, but I don’t think we would state that NWT residents would get better service than Alberta. It is part of co-management of health care service and to state that we’re using our money to give prior service to Nunavut would not be correct.
Thirdly, supplementary health benefit changes are now there as a cost-cutting issue. It’s not there to make up money that we are losing from providing services to Nunavut or insurance. That is completely incorrect. Supplementary health benefits are being reviewed not to reduce the package. We are keeping all the benefits that are there, which is more generous than any other parts of Canada, but that we are looking at streamlining the access, which is very important, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, streamlining access sounds like a reduction of services to me. I’m not sure where the Minister...how she understands it that way.
Mr. Speaker, when I referred to Nunavut services as a priority, we send our team professionals here, whether they’re physio or speech, to places in Nunavut and that makes their clients more of a priority when we have people here not getting full services. On top of that, it’s a billing issue.
But, Mr. Speaker, my question, as stated before, and I’ll ask it this way: Mr. Speaker, again, we’ll have a difference of opinion on reduced services or money, but the fact is, supplementary health benefits has been articulated over and over and over. Again, we can’t afford to keep paying that. So what work has been done by the Minister of Health and Social Services and her staff to find all the wasted money that we’re spending on the issues I’ve raised today, Mr. Speaker?
Mr. Speaker, I don’t know what he means by wasted money. Our government makes the investment of $326 million on our health care services, the services that our people need. People on the ground are working 24/7 to deliver the care that people need. Special services that we provide to Nunavut, those specialists work on contract with the GNWT and sometimes they have contracts with Nunavut. So I don’t think, you know, it doesn’t help the debate to mix up apples and oranges and throw out statements saying that we are wasting money.
With respect to supplementary health benefits, I believe that the government has put out the public discussion paper, we are engaging the public widely, and I am interested in hearing from the public as to how we could go forward. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we charge WCB for cost and injuries, so why don’t we consider that? Mr. Speaker, we send people out to Nunavut and don’t get paid for the contracts. We know that for a fact. Mr. Speaker, we spend at least $200 a minute in health care in our Northwest Territories, and the reality is…
Do you have a question, Mr. Hawkins?
The reality is we’re making doctors manage. Why aren’t we looking at those issues to save money in our system rather than cutting away at supplementary health benefits?
We bill for the services that we provide to Nunavut. Once again, supplementary health benefit discussions are not about cutting services in supplementary. We continue to and will have one of the best, if not the best, Supplementary Health Benefits Program anywhere in the country. We will continue to do that. The way the rules are written are quite outdated and the user profile shows that we need to look at other considerations such as affordability to pay, as one of the factors in determining who accesses this very generous and important program that we offer.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe the Minister is completely incorrect in us being able to bill insurance companies for services that they are rightly responsible for. I’d like to hear the Minister on how she defines reduction of services for supplementary health benefits is not considered cutting services.
It is, once again, incorrect for the Member to say that we do not bill private insurance. I just said that there are some things that the government has to provide that nobody else would pay. So you wouldn’t bill somebody for something that they wouldn’t be paying in the first place.
Supplementary health and entire health and social services sustainability is very important. As I’ve stated before, the Government of Ontario projects that they are going to be spending half of their entire budget on the health and social services system. We as Canadian people and NWT residents need to look at what we are doing with our program. I want to say that we are doing really well in the Northwest Territories. We’re not talking about reducing services; we’re talking about examining what we do and what we can do better. Foundation for Change is an action plan and supplementary health discussion is part of the discussion that we’re going to have with the people.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
