Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
Sure, but now we're paying for some people to see those doctors, find out what they need to solve their issue, and then not be able to afford that solution. How is that sensible?
And yeah, I know it costs money, but the thing is "we" fund a lot of things that the government shouldn't be involved in, or that should be a lesser concern on the list of priorities than the health and welfare of our citizens. When you see the government basically posing with a giant novelty cheque, you can almost surely mark that down as something that should fall behind things like this.
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It's a pie right? You have this much funding and right now, governments choose to put into medicare and exclude pharmacare (let's use these terms to keep it simple). The federal government in increasing that to include birth control and diabetes medication, about 40 billion per year. Alberta wants the money but not the program.
Another option is to raise taxes and add more funding obviously. Another option is to put more quotas on doctors and surgeries and shift that money towards expanded pharmacare. I believe a family doctor can charge to see a maximum of 40 patients a day in Alberta? I think BC has no limit but measures on time spent? Anyways, what if this was lowered to like 20 so that the other half could be used to fund pharmacare. We have a family doctor shortage already so the system is already very very stretched. There's just not enough money in the system.
Alberta UCP believe that two-tiered healthcare solves this. What if only the lower tier got doctor and pharmacare and the upper tier has to pay for everything? That's up for debate.