Reasonable differences

Saskatchewan Health Minister Len Taylor nicely points out the problems with Tony Clement's apparent plan to impose a wait-time guarantee without including additional funding as part of the package:

(Taylor) flatly dismissed a suggestion made by federal Health Minister Tony Clement that guarantees could be funded from the 2004 first ministers' health accord, which included a $5.5-billion fund for reducing wait times.

That money has been allocated to reduce Saskatchewan's long waiters' list and to develop the province's diagnostic imaging system and network, Taylor said.

"Saskatchewan's position clearly is any additional wait time guarantees or additional pressure on the province must also be matched with additional federal dollars," he said...

"We are monitoring in this province every surgery that's done -- not just three or four or five as mandated by a guarantee list and as a result, we know where we're at in all cases," Taylor said. "Our goal in Saskatchewan is to first and foremost reduce our long waiters' list and some of those on the long waiters' list may in fact not show up anywhere in a national guarantee...

Taylor said every province also has unique needs and he's concerned health problems in other jurisdictions that might be put on a guarantee list might not be a concern in Saskatchewan and the province could be penalized.

So far, Clement's public discussion so far has been largely devoid of any meaningful detail...so the Cons may yet have enough room for compromise to find a way to include extra funding to match any extra demands. But if the federal government wants to try to set arbitrary time limits on certain procedures with no regard for the system as a whole, then it'll face a rightful backlash both from the provinces involved, and from patients who are better served by a province which takes a more thorough view.