Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll have questions for the NWT Health Minister regarding supplementary health benefits, and of course, it’s not to the Ontario Health Minister when we talk about Ontario benefits, and certainly not to the Alberta Minister of Health when we hear about how Alberta does stuff.
Mr. Speaker, speaking to the Minister for Health and Social Services in the Northwest Territories, my first question on the supplementary health benefits issue is this: under Section 5, and I won’t go into the details of how far down in the policy, under the Cabinet policy regarding supp health benefits, one of the issues that allows the Minister to deal with a particular policy is it says the Minister may make recommendations to the policy and bring them back to the Executive Council. Mr. Speaker, has this Minister done any effort whatsoever to take back some of the suggestions we have provided on this side of the House back to the Executive Council, and one namely being no co-payment? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Every suggestion, proposal made by the Members and the general public in our two and a half, three years of review has been reviewed, noted, considered, analyzed. Every major public announcement I have made on this policy had gone to the Cabinet, Cabinet has reviewed and approved it, and this is a Cabinet initiative as well as the Minister of Health. Thank you.
I have to say I really just don’t believe the Minister, Mr. Speaker, and I know that it comes as a shock, but, quite honestly, I just don’t believe it. I mean, I’m not allowed to say I’ve felt misled on this particular issue, but I’ll tell you, I really believed, and so did a lot of people believe, that the issue of co-payments would be considered, not where your threshold would start or stop, but I’ll tell you a lot of people in this Territory believe that the co-payment was going to be discussed under the threshold issue, not just where it’s going to start or whether we should have one or not.
Mr. Speaker, was any issue like that ever taken back to the Cabinet table and said, well, wait a minute, this policy, I don’t totally agree with? Has any discussion ever been brought back to Cabinet to revisit this whole policy? Thank you.
Thank you. Absolutely, Mr. Speaker. We’re talking about health care benefits to make all of the programs and the service benefits available under supplementary health and to provide it without co-payment provided to everybody who lives in the Northwest Territories would make it an insured service. That would make it like any other program under the Canada Health Act and I understand that’s what people want us to do and we have reviewed that and it’s not something we are able to do, because the government has to focus on insured service. Insured services are doctors’ services, nurse services, community health services, our specialist services at the hospital, and no government in Canada could provide full, no questions asked, indiscretionary 100 percent coverage for all supplementary health benefits. No one can do that because we are hard pressed to pay for our physician and nurse services in our communities.
In the North, medical travel is part of the insured services. No government could do that. It’s easy for Members here to say, oh, just include everybody, do it as a universal, and no questions asked. Mr. Speaker, yes, we have considered that. This is not an option that we can afford. So we have to make alternatively a program that’s most accessible to most people in addressing the needs of those who need the government most. This is not a tax on the sick and the elderly because we will protect the sick and the elderly. We will have our seniors, we will still cover people who are not seniors as well. Thank you.
I’d just like to recognize the clock. The time for oral questions has expired, so I will allow the Member to conclude his supplementary questions. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Prior to 2004, the health policy was designated under the disease state coverage. It worked. It may not have been perfect, but it worked, Mr. Speaker. So if you had diabetes you could get care specific to diabetes. That didn’t mean that if you had the sniffles you could get a prescription automatically for antibiotics or who knows what just because you had the sniffles, Mr. Speaker, but that’s the way it’s set up now. It was like a slippery slope, those changes back in 2004. Disease state worked and I’m going to tell you right now that the network and process still exists. We could go back to the old system and it worked, Mr. Speaker.
I’m ashamed that this is the best, when the Minister talks about this three to four years to do, I’m embarrassed that this is the best we could come up with; truly I am. The question to the Minister is why do we waive some of the fees for some of the people, but why can’t we just waive the fees for the rest of the people? We’ve provided enough solutions how to do that. Why not? Thank you.
The fact of the matter is the old disease and conditions list did not work, and it doesn’t work now. Every day I get a request from the Member, every other Member, I get calls from all over the Territories wanting to know why we’re not covering this, we’re not covering that, this medication, there’s a new disease that comes on that gets diagnosed, there are new drugs in the market that we’re not able to pay, we have new wheelchairs, I don’t know, the list goes on. I’m sure if I did the Hansard research I could find a statement made by the honourable Member from Yellowknife Centre who said our program doesn’t work. This is the reason why we’ve had to review this. The better thing about our new program is that it has a mechanism for appeal. Right now there is no mechanism for appeal and under the new program we would allow for an independent appeal process where somebody could appeal their income status, as well as what’s included and not included in the program. Thank you.
Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I started this question period off from my set of questions asking did she take it back to Cabinet with the issues that I raised and somewhat similar as what other Members have raised here. She has implied or made it clear yes. I’d like to ask her, will she table every stitch of information that she’s brought to the Cabinet table to show that she’s provided an alternative approach than the one being presented, the one that this government has buckled into, the one that we have to thank the 15th Assembly for, that this Cabinet keeps defending and saying it’s the way to go? Will she provide this House and table in this House and if we can’t table it due to Cabinet secrecy or whatnot, will she make sure that it’s provided to every Member up there in the House under a confidential basis so we can see what the Minister has proposed other than just continuing to shovel the 15th Assembly policy on this House? Thank you.
I am aware, Mr. Speaker, that the Member considers himself a student of rules and procedures of the House. I know he knows the rules and procedures of the House. He studies books on the rules and procedures of the House. Mr. Speaker, he knows that I’m not privy to table Cabinet documents, but the Member is also aware that every major information and analysis about this program would go to Cabinet and then it was made available to committees. That’s our regular practice.
Mr. Speaker, if the Member has any other alternatives that he wants us to consider, we would look at that. This has been a very open process, Mr. Speaker, and we will continue to do that. Thank you.
Item 8, written questions. Mrs. Groenewegen.
Mr. Speaker, I‘d like to seek unanimous consent to return to item 7 on the Order Paper, oral questions.
---Unanimous consent granted
