Health Accord Break Down: Costs & Consequences of the Failed 2016/17 Negotiations

Under-reported in the national media, the fiscal approach of the federal government and the process used to achieve it conflicts with the values, priorities, expectations and health care needs of Canadians. [...] The declining share of federal health care funding not only increases fiscal pressures on provinces to cut needed public health care services,6 but it also reduces the authority of the federal government to protect and improve medicare.7 The federal government did not take the time to hammer out actual measures to improve health care with the provinces and territories in return for an attractive f. [...] In 2002, the Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, headed by the Honourable Roy Romanow, reported that the provinces were shouldering too much of the health care costs and recommended an increase to the federation contribution.32 Romanow also recommended that any escalator must be set in advance for five-year periods to provide stable and predictable funding. [...] Canada’s finance ministers were outraged at both the suggestion to tie the CHT to GDP and the process by which the new funding formula was dictated to them with no notice and little discussion.43 The following year both the Parliamentary Budget Office44 and the Council of the Federation calculated the impact of the new funding formula and announced that by tying the CHT to GDP the provinces were b. [...] Finally, pressured by patients and their advocates to take action, the federal Health Minister asked the Quebec Health Minister to end all extra-billing practices, specifying that the federal health transfer payment to the province would be reduced if the province did not comply.52 Conversely, during the 2016 Health Accord negotiations, the Saskatchewan government claimed in the media that their f.