Sept. 28, 2006
Check against delivery
There is no question that we all value British Columbia's health services. The Canada Health Act creates one of the most important social frameworks that we have in the country. When it was passed in 1984 it represented Canadians' commitment to one another and it reflected the progress that had been made since 1947, when Tommy Douglas first introduced public health care in Canada. It reinforced the public health initiatives that had been introduced in British Columbia: the hospital insurance program and B.C. medical plan, and the Medical Care Act introduced and passed by W.A.C. Bennett's government.
So much has changed in the intervening years. Each government has added new services, new technologies and new treatments. Incredible new procedures have been introduced in the intervening decades. And each year, those benefits bring new pressures and new demands.
In the last five years since 2001-02, our population has increased 4 percent. Our health costs and budgets have increased at a rate ten times faster. Those costs are continuing to go up. We have had a 4 percent population growth, but some of the most common surgeries have risen between 7 percent and, for knee replacements, 84 percent.
It's not just the increases in procedures that have driven up costs. It's big increases in pharmaceutical costs as well. Over the past decade our population has increased by half a million
