The thing that ate the government
My last column made fun of the Ontario Budget for revealing what a sham the province's complaints of ill-treatment at the hands of the feds really are: transfers have tripled in the last decade, enabling the provincial government to go on the kind of spending spree Bob Rae could have only dreamed of....
A more sobering stat in the budget is worth mentioning however: by fiscal 2010, health care will account for 48% of all program spending -- and rising. It won't be long before the province is spending more than half its budget on that one program. Essentially, our governments have become little more than health care dispensaries, to the detriment of other essential public services.
And yet for all that frantic money-tossing -- feds to provs, provs to hospitals, hospitals to providers -- service has only grown worse.
3/26/2007
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One thing I don't understand - why is it necessarily undesirable for the provincial government to spend 50% of its budget on one field? How is that "to the detriment of other essential public services"?
If other services are feeling the squeeze, the province can cut the less useful ones, or raise taxes. And health care is a labour-intensive industry that isn't subject to the same economies of scale like other government departments may be. That would suggest to me that, as Ontario and its government grow, the share of expenses for health care will increase.
HA HA. I know you don't have control over the ads that run in your header Andrew, but I just found this amusing. The header read as follows:
ANDREW COYNE.COM JESUS DIDN"T EXIST?
If only it were nothing but health care, but our various social and welfare expsense keep going up, and we're paying and paying, without ever getting anywhere.
We're headed for a disaster here in Canada, unless we can turn things around.
I lived in the US for 5 years.
Despite what anyone says, on the balance, health care service is better in the US than in Canada, certainly compared to British Columbia where I now live.
I cannot say if the Americans are getting good value for their dollar, but from the perspective of a user of their health care system, I was much happier there than I am here.
Well, whoever wins the Oct 10 election (that is the Libs or Tories, this won't apply if it's the NDP but that's not going to happen), anyhow, expect to see major changes in the organization of the delivery of health care in Ontario. The province is finally catching up to all the other provinces and moving to a more "regional health authority" model, and while they'll throw a bit more money at the system to grease it while these changes are made, after a few years this new LHIN-based system (Local Health Integrated Networks) should finally start saving a few bucks.