Tuesday, November 3, 2009

H1N1 and the governments of Canada

I am trying to figure out why in Canada we have the federal government involved at all with the H1N1 vaccination program. Last time I checked, it is the provinces that deliver health care in Canada.

  • What benefit is there in the federal government ordering the vaccine and then shipping it to the provinces?
  • Would it not have been faster and more effective if each province had dealt with this themselves?
  • How long was the vaccine delayed by going through the federal government?
  • Who is paying for the vaccine? If it is the provinces, what is the role of the federal government? Are the feds cost recovering and does mean the provinces are paying for Health Canada staff costs?
  • How many staff hours have been used by Health Canada on H1N1? Who benefits from this cost?

The provinces of Canada need to get the federal government out of health care. There is no benefit and only added costs and red tape by having the federal government involved in health care. The time has come for the Canada Health Act to be repealed.

If we have a federal government involvement in health care to offer money to the provinces the money for health care, why not just let the provinces collect the same taxes themselves and cut out the federal government? I believe that there would savings nationwide if we were to remove the federal government from health care. I also think we would see a more efficient and effective health care system by removing a redundant level of government.

2 comments:

Toronto mls said...

An interesting concept to think about. However, I think that some kind of central control is necessary. Different health care conditions in every province could probably create problems too...

Julie

Bernard said...

If central control makes sense, we should then turn over control of health care to the UN or the US.

The provinces are the right scale of unit for broad based health policy, and the communities are the right level to deliver health care.