Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Health says the intent of her supplementary health proposals is to address the issue of affordability. In fact, the reverse is true. Look at the $50,000 threshold. Remember, this is the net income threshold and not the after-tax income. After taxes, a $50,000 net income shrinks to $40,000 or $42,000. Someone buying their own drugs for catastrophic issues could easily spend the 25 percent required, or $12,500. That means their real income after taxes and drugs would plummet to under $35,000. This is before any basic needs are covered. That’s not just working poor, it’s working sick and poor. It’s brutal and it’s wrong. And remember the net income figure used will be the previous year’s income; that is the last good income you had before you got sick and your income went through the floor. So the principle here is to use a person’s past healthy income to help them when they and their earnings are sick. Again, totally silly and cruel.
We still don’t know what administration of this program is going to cost. But as one senior in my riding knows, even under today’s simple system, you spend days of effort and months of time working and waiting to get paid back. How many people already on borderline incomes will be on the bigger and better waiting list this program will create? Does the Minister have time to fix these cases one by one as she has to do repeatedly for my constituent?
So how will people be able to afford to protect their health? When people get sick because they can’t afford their medicine, they can go to the hospital at a system cost of thousands of dollars a day and receive their drugs for free. Obviously, under the Minister’s scheme, many people will drop third-party insurance and go completely on the public purse.
Third-party insurance is a gift that can take our costs away. We should be requiring it and designing a program to top up these costs, not pass them off on the sick. We should be working hard with our fellow jurisdictions to reduce drug costs, by far the biggest supplementary health cost, through joint action.
Mr. Speaker, the roar of public protest that has greeted these proposals should tell us something. It says that when government sets its priorities for spending their taxes, health care should be at the top of the list.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted