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Tory's Rx: Health invoices
Conservative leader pushes patient statements as way to boost grasp of 
true costs
Feb. 19, 2006. 01:00 AM
ROB FERGUSON AND RICHARD BRENNAN
QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU

NIAGARA FALLS—Ontarians need to get it through their heads that health 
care is pricey and the best way to do it is by sending annual statements 
showing how much theirs costs, Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory 
says.

He's reviving an old, but never fulfilled, 1998 plan by the previous 
Conservative government of Mike Harris to mail those details in hopes of 
keeping health costs from rising so fast.

"People, I think, in many cases, believe that health care is free," Tory 
told reporters yesterday at a party conference helping to develop 
campaign promises for the provincial election coming Oct. 4, 2007.

"It's not free... The more they understand how much procedures and rooms 
and doctors' visits and emergency visits and so on cost, I think they 
will have a better understanding."

The problem has been that the government doesn't have the necessary 
computer systems in place to prepare such statements, a situation that 
is "shocking," Tory said.

"Visa seems to keep track every month of everything we buy."

About 1,000 party activists were told yesterday that annual health-care 
spending of $33 billion now eats up 41 per cent of the provincial 
budget. Given current trends, that share would rise to 50 per cent in 
six years and 100 per cent in 2027, said the Fraser Institute's Brett 
Skinner.

People tend to have "unrealistic expectations" of the health-care 
system, warned Duncan Sinclair, who led the previous Conservative 
government's Health Care Restructuring Commission that closed or merged 
more than two dozen hospitals.

The crowd applauded Sinclair when he called for annual statements to be 
sent to patients, and later said Health Minister George Smitherman is 
"doing great" in efforts to reform the overall health-care system.

Liberal MPP John Wilkinson questioned the wisdom of sending statements 
saying the cost, easily in the millions to create new computer systems 
that can spit out the information, is better spent directly on patients.

"This (Conservative) party is still stuck at where it was," said 
Wilkinson (Perth-Middlesex), attending the convention as an observer.

Tory said there is no harm in doing the statements because the 
underlying information is needed so that health officials can keep 
better track of costs in the system and get patients thinking about what 
level of care they need.

In his keynote speech to the convention at dinner last night, Tory said 
his party's challenge is "to demonstrate how we're going to do things 
differently" than the Liberals and that means not promising the moon.

"We're not here to be all things to all people," he said.

Tory said he will begin by not making promises he can't keep and 
proceeded to heap scorn on Premier Dalton McGuinty for promising not to 
raise taxes and then bringing in a hefty health-care tax.

Tory promised he would also set himself apart from the Liberals by 
embracing "the awesome power of free enterprise."

The Conservatives also delved into community safety issues, inviting 
Rev. Eugene Rivers, the outspoken Boston pastor known for fighting youth 
crime.

Rivers told the conference the answer is to throw the "hoodlums" in jail 
and create programs for everybody else, especially in the poorer 
communities where fatherless families and illiteracy are serious problems.

"You just can't beat people into law and order," he said at a news 
conference with Tory. "By the same token, it is equally foolish to think 
that a hug-a-thug strategy... is going to be successful."

Rivers, who is black, said the problem of black-on-black crime comes to 
Canada from the Caribbean and Britain and must also be addressed there 
to have any hope here.

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