No choice but to strengthen and support medicare, Saskatchewan premier says - Commission On The Future Of Health Care - Brief Article

REGINA -- There is no choice but to strengthen and sustain medicare, Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert told the Romanow Commission at its first public hearing in March. Saskatchewan is the birthplace of Canada's medicare system.

The only choice is how to go about it, he said. For Saskatchewan, that means restructuring the system and getting more support from the federal government. He raised concerns about some of the other options for medicare that had been contained in Romanow's interim support.

User fees do not work, he said, pointing to Saskatchewan's experience with them in the 1960s. If fees are too high, they discourage people from getting care and if too low, the administrative costs outweigh the benefits. Calvert also dismissed the idea of a medical savings account.

"Saskatchewan supports the idea of individual responsibility for one's own health, but an indiscriminate system of reward and punishment is not the answer," he said. He also said that the public system is better, cheaper and more efficient that private health care delivery.

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