Premier Moe says federal health-care funding offer 'disappointing'

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe say the federal government's health-care funding offer to premiers this week was "disappointing."

"The details of the offer amount to a two per cent increase, and falls short in outlining a path forward for long-term, sustainable funding that all premiers have been calling for," Moe said.

Moe and his fellow premiers have been calling for the last few years for a sit-down with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to specifically discuss a new funding model. Premiers are asking for the federal government to increase the Canada Health Transfer (CHT) from 22 per cent to 35 per cent, or an additional $28 billion per year.

Last year, the CHT cost the federal treasury $45.2 billion. It was set to increase to $49.1 billion in this fiscal year.

With the new funding announced Tuesday, the CHT and the separate bilateral funding arrangements will be worth about $54 billion in 2023-24.

Saskatchewan would see nearly $6.2 billion of the pledged $196 billion from the federal government over a 10-year period.

Roughly $5.9 billion would be through the federal transfer, with the remainder coming through bilateral agreements in mental health and substance use, home care and long-term care.

Moe said the premiers are expected to meet soon to discuss the details of the federal proposal.

"While the federal funding proposal is disappointing, it will not deter our government from moving ahead with our ambitious health human resources plan to add over 1,000 new health-care workers, as well as making important investments in mental health and addictions, reducing surgical wait times, building and renovating health facilities and many other health care priorities," Moe said in a statement.

Primary care needs overhaul, health policy analyst says

Canadian health policy analyst Steven Lewis said the nearly $200-billion dollar proposal isn't huge, given what Ottawa already sends to the provinces.

"The federal government is proposing to add about $5 billion in new money. So it's not much in the scheme of things. It's not a big game-changing, massive new investment," Lewis said.

"So by and large, I think the premiers were disappointed in the amount of money, but it doesn't sound like they were terribly surprised."

Lewis said money is not the answer when it comes to improving health care in Canada.

He said provinces need to, "figure out once and for all if we have a money problem or do we have an organizational problem and efficiency problem?"

"I think it's more the latter than the former, and I think the evidence is, we have since 2000 a 27 per cent increase in the Canadian population and 106 per cent increase in real terms in health-care spending. Did that solve any of these problems? No."

Dr. Alika Lafontaine, head of the Canadian Medical Association, said the provinces and territories need to create better working environments for health-care providers and improve access to primary care.

"More than six million Canadians do not have access to a family physician. More people are showing up to emergency rooms and not receiving care. We have reports of persons who are dying waiting in emergency rooms while trying to get assessed," Lafontaine told CBC's Power and Politics this week.

"These things are a sliver of what's going on in the health-care system. The hard conversation we need to have is how are we going to fix those problems."

Lewis said primary care is the area provinces need to focus on.

"I don't know how the country can stand by when five or six million Canadians don't have a regular source of care. That's a disgraceful and ominous statistic," he said. 

Lewis noted that the total number of doctors has risen faster than the population, proportionally.

"It's not a shortage of doctors, we have a shortage of family medicine."

Lewis said Saskatchewan could address that issue without the federal government.

"We have, in Saskatchewan, I suspect somewhere close to 200,000 people without a regular source of care. How about making that 100,000 within three years? That would be a commitment."

Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck said the province needs to tackle health-care worker retention immediately.

"If we don't start to address this retention issue we are going to continue to lose health-care workers to other provinces. Certainly, recruitment is important, but until we address the retention issue this is a revolving door and this is what we've heard from health-care workers."

Beck said she is concerned about how much money the federal government is pledging for health care, but that an offer of $2 billion immediately to the provinces is needed.

"The lack of primary care, be it physicians or nurse practitioners, is another issue. We see that in rural communities, but we also see the entire city of Saskatoon, our largest city in the province, at times there are no physicians accepting new patients. That's something that critically needs to be addressed."