Health percentage

A political song sheet is a script that is followed so that everyone says the same thing. Political junkies call it "messaging". The idea is that everyone repeats the same message. The hope is the public will hear the same thing so often that they will accept it as truth and repeat it.

I have noticed that apologists for the Campbell government have a song sheet with respect to health spending. The line goes "health spending will soon take over half of government revenue and leave room for nothing else." The implication is that everyone should keep their mouths shut and accept radical restructuring of the health system. In the words of Sheila Orr, rookie MLA for Victoria-Hillside, "Experts are running the system. We shouldn't interfere in every decision." That MLA seems to forget that her job is first and foremost to act as an advocate for her constituents. The Campbell bunch seem to think that the job is first and foremost to defend the government.

Consider a simple example to see the foolishness of the Campbell song sheet on health care. Suppose you have one of those nice red $50 bills in your pocket together with three $20 bills. The red bill then would represent $50 out of $110 or 45%. Now suppose someone took one of your twenties. That would mean the red bill would represent $50 out of $90 or 55%. So it is that health spending can increase as a proportion of total spending simply because government is cutting services like welfare by 30%.

Total (consolidated revenue fund) spending for the BC government was estimated at $25.637 billion in fiscal year 2001-02. The government's plan is to reduce that level of spending by $1.509 billion to $24.128 billion by fiscal year 2004-05. Meanwhile, revenue (consolidated revenue fund, i.e. before the contribution of crown corporations) is estimated to increase from $22.853 in fiscal year 2001-02 to $24.325 in fiscal 2004-05.

In the July 30th fiscal update, health spending was estimated as $9.646 billion for fiscal 2001-02. It was budgeted for $10.380 for 2002-03 and $10.378 for 2004-05. In other words, it increased by $734 million only to be frozen for the next two fiscal years. Meanwhile the social services (welfare) budget was $3.4 billion for 2001-02 as of the July 30th fiscal update, and it was budgeted to decrease to $2.368 billion by 2004-05. The cut of over $1 billion for social services represents two thirds of the planned cuts in government services. Since the planned cuts in government services just equals the income tax cuts, one could also say that cuts to welfare are expected to pay for two thirds of the income tax cuts. How is that for redistribution?

The increase that did occur for health spending was to pay for the contracts that were imposed on the doctors and nurses. In the words of the budget document, the current budget has "new revenue measures totalling $758 million to pay for health care system compensation costs". There is no danger that health costs will grow to absorb all revenue when the Campbell government simply uses its imposed contracts to justify imposing more taxes to claw back the income tax cuts.