Healthcare Accessibility, Financial Sustainability, and Quality of Care:
Which of them has to give? - The C.D. Howe Institute Benefactors Lecture.

TORONTO, Nov. 18 /CNW/ - Reforms to reduce the fiscal burden of Canada's public healthcare costs should preserve the core value of equal access, while evolving away from universality, according to the author of the C.D. Howe Institute's 2010 Benefactors Lecture, released today. In Critical Condition: A Historian's Prognosis on Canada's Aging Healthcare System, Michael Bliss, Professor Emeritus of the University of Toronto, reviews the history of Canada's healthcare system and draws lessons for future reforms.

Professor Bliss suggests the following:

(1) we reconcile ourselves to the fact of Canadians' demand for a high and probably growing level of healthcare expenditure in a predominantly public system;

(2) consistent with our experience with other social programs once considered entitlements, we encourage the evolution of our health insurance system from providing universality of benefits onto a needs basis, preserving the core value of equal access;

(3) more attention should be paid to appropriate divisions of responsibility in the management of Canadian healthcare (enabling a more prominent role for medical researchers and practitioners in determining what is medically necessary); and

(4) hard questions be asked about the problems inherent in managing a complex "system" sheltered from market incentives, signals, and discipline.

Professor Bliss argues that reimbursement for healthcare in Canada now be on the basis of financial need, not universality, following the path taken for previously universal benefits such as the "Baby Bonus" and Old Age Security, since re-organized according to a needs basis.

For the study, go to LINK www.cdhowe.org/pdf/Benefactor_Lecture_2010.pdf

For further information:

Michael Bliss, University Professor Emeritus,
University of Toronto; or
Colin Busby, Policy Analyst,
C.D. Howe Institute. Phone: [phone]