Editorial: Demand value for spending bumps

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Health industry stakeholders have been lobbying for larger-than-normal increases to sector spending by the provincial government – by their take, as a way to stabilize a breaking system. Are they likely to get it?

Looking forward to today’s budget, we’d be unsurprised to see the Tories dump a share of the fiscal room, created by their accumulated surpluses, toward spending increases for the health department. Apart from the policy wisdom, consider the politics: With a public perception the government is underspending, and health a politically sensitive portfolio, there is little advantage to resist.

What matters to us is not the increases per se, but the outcomes. Two decades ago, the storied Romanow Report was the basis for a big increase in federal health transfers – which resulted in more spending bumps, but not the generational change in outcomes leaders had hoped for.

Achieving real advancements in health-care access and quality will take money. But to balance the results against the outlay, it also requires program design that holds providers to account for the extra dollars spent. Otherwise, we’ll just push more taxpayer funds into a black hole, never to be seen again.

It’s worth restating that money for health care doesn’t come from a magical provider. One way or another, the people will pay more to receive these services.

In our view, the government basically can’t spend enough money to transition primary care to group-based practices, to increase the supply of long-term care spaces, and to modernize medical records.

But to pay doctors to do paperwork, and to take on the orphaned patients they should have been taking anyway? No thanks.

Our policy leaders need to be hard-headed. It is inevitable we will pay more, given the demographic changes that have weighed heavily on our health system. But we should only do so only with value and accountability for our dollar. This budget should deliver it.