February 10, 2003

Delaying the Health Plan

Just over two months after the last staged cabinet meeting (oops, they missed January), Ministers appeared before the television cameras on February 7th and put on a performance. Premier Campbell led off with a 40 minute presentation on the First Ministers' meeting on health care but it took a comment from Finance Minister Gary Collins to spill the beans on how the government will get around the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act. Collins said:

"The Ministry of Health - because we still have not determined, until now, roughly what the money might be and then where that money will go - will be tabling a status quo service plan based on the numbers that were there last year and the service plan that was there last year. We expect that within a number of weeks after the budget is introduced, we will have some final plans in place by the Ministry of Health. At that time we will introduce an amended service plan for the Ministry of Health as well as some amended budget numbers for the overall budget."

That means that anyone who hoped to see whether government was going ahead with its plans to cut Pharmacare will have to wait until the real service plan is tabled sometime in March or April. An open and honest government might give some indication of what it plans to do with Pharmacare.

Last year's "service plan" for the Ministry of Health showed the resource allocation table reproduced below. Note that it shows a two year budget freeze (Campbell Liberal's call that "protection"). It also shows an $88 million cut for Pharmacare in the year beginning April 1, 2003. The fact that population and price pressures will continue even after costs are shifted onto sick seniors is illustrated by the Pharmacare increase in 2004-05. The plan shows a one year cut followed by 15% growth (the same thing happened when Quebec changed its drug program). That is another way of saying that the real cost shift in 2003-04 could be over $180 million ($88 million as an absolute cut plus the loss of protection against price increases and utilization changes).

Ipsos-Reid will be polling British Columbians on their voting intentions during the first week of March with results coming out around the third week. Don't be surprised if our open and honest government keeps its plans for Pharmacare hidden until after the questions have been asked for that poll.