Canadian premiers have unanimously rejected Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's take-it-or-leave-it plans for health transfer payments to the provinces, B.C. Premier Christy Clark said Monday.
She said they all agreed the plan – made without negotiating with the provinces -- is both "unprecedented and unacceptable."
Clark is hosting first ministers' meetings in her province to discuss Ottawa's unilateral plans for a per-capita health funding formula, saying the funding by population does not factor in care for the elderly.
Clark said the premiers hope to "open a dialogue" with the federal government on the issue.
"We want to be constructive, not confrontational with the federal government," she said at news conference Monday in Victoria.
Other premiers said the funding per-capita plan isn't equal because provinces with elderly or isolated populations will have greater health-care costs.
"Canadians should have the ability to have a comparable level of service no matter where they live," Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger told CTV's National Affairs. "That service doesn't have to be the same, but it has to be comparable."
Flaherty said every province has its own situation to deal with, and the federal government is being generous with its new plan.
"This is a lot of money going into health care from the federal government," he told CTV's Power Play.
Flaherty said Ottawa has planned to continue increasing health payments to the provinces at six per cent annually until 2017. After that, the rate would be tied to economic growth and adjusted for inflation. That is currently estimated to be about four per cent but the government said the rate would never fall below three per cent.
Flaherty said those increases were greater than those planned by the provinces.
Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews has the biggest portfolio of any provincial cabinet minister. She says the basic model of health care in Canada needs to change.
"When medicare was first established it was really designed for a younger population, where episodic care was the bulk of health care" she told National Affairs. "We are really moving to a population that demands a focus on chronic care."
Dr. John Haggie, Canadian Medical Association president, said he was happy to hear the premiers talking about collaboration and national standards for health care.
"More care isn't necessarily better care, it's just more. If you put the needs of the patient front and centre you can describe a system that would look after patients as they get older with chronic diseases in their own communities," he said on National Affairs. "The savings you get from that approach will actually go back to providing resources to do other things."
Canada's healthcare system spends about 60 to 70 per cent of its budget on chronic illnesses, Canadian Nurses Association president Judith Shamian added.
"Our performance in comparison to other OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries is really poor," she said on National Affairs. "We can do much better for the same amount of money."
The Atlantic provinces and B.C. have aging populations that are growing faster than in other parts of the country.
"Equal funding is not necessarily equitable funding," Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter added. "This is the problem. We have 16 per cent of our population currently over the age of 65 in our province. We're going to move from 16 per cent over the age of 65 to almost 30 per cent over the next 20 years."
He called Flaherty's plan, which was introduced suddenly in December, "an extraordinary burden on the system."
Flaherty said Ottawa has planned to continue increasing health payments to the provinces at six per cent annually until 2017. After that, the rate would be tied to economic growth and adjusted for inflation. That is currently estimated to be about four per cent but the government said the rate would never fall below three per cent.
