CBC: Health-care premiums are about taxation, not health care, policy expert says
Premier Brian Pallister’s proposed health-care premiums are about money, not medicine, says the director of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy at the University of Manitoba.
“This is all about taxation and not so much about health care, so I think that we are seeing an outcry from both sides … based on their own philosophies around tax increases,” said Dr. Alan Katz, director of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy at the University of Manitoba.
Pallister announced Wednesday that his government might introduce health-care premiums to offset rising costs.
Manitobans will have to start paying health-care premiums, as residents in some other provinces do, or prepare to see services cut, Pallister said.
Health-care costs are rising and “we need to pay for it somehow,” Katz said.
Some governments choose to run deficits to pay for health care, Katz said, but the Pallister government has said that’s not an option.
That means the government must find new money to pay for health care, Katz said.
“It’s just an increase in taxes. Realistically, it’s nothing more than that.”