Quote:
Originally Posted by btimbit
You'd also save the cost of mailing and printing these cards, similar to how they save by having one license plate instead of two. Not to mention the redundancy of having two seperate databases for something like your driver's license and your health card, no reason they can't be just one.
I think articles on it so far are poorly worded as well. People more familiar with the AP are saying the digital thing is something for the future and the first step is just making the drivers license and health card one card.
But on the fraud, there's been two auditor general reports on it. In 2004 it was estimated up to 80 million a year could be lost from it. In 2015 there was another report that likened the cards to a credit card with limit and suggested at least having them expire but that got axed last spring.
There's also been issues of people from Montana coming up to use the free healthcare. Communities near the US border report having more health care cards on file than people living near there.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...-alberta-great
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmon...neral-1.509819
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3537805/ |
Fair enough, I found at least one of those articles after my last post.
I still question that if the problem is so bad, why aren't the service providers doing more to ensure cards are legit. For instance, I haven't shown my card in over 2 years. I have a photo on my phone and generally either hand it over or just read the receptionist my number.
So does it follow that making the card more fraud proof reduces fraud if the providers aren't checking them anyways... I would assume they are at least running my Alberta healthcare number against some kind of database as it is.
I could potentially get behind a single card, I don't think I can get behind an app.