Today, Premier Klein's Advisory Council on Health will release its long awaited report.
If strategic media leaks are to be believed, it will recommend major changes in the delivery and financing of health care in Alberta.
The Mazankowski report - named after former Deputy Prime Minister, Don Mazankowski (aka Maz), who is the Advisory Council Chairman - will cause much provincial wrangling, but it will also be important from a national perspective. It will kick off the "Medicare Year."
Later this month, Roy Romanow's interim report and spring schedule of consultations, townhall meetings and TV debates will be released. Next month, the Kirby Senate Committee will release its final report. And Mr. Romanow will be back with his final report in November.
The health care debate will centre around five major themes: Sustainability; financing and delivery; the Canada Health Act; system cost drivers, and international comparisons. Maz raised some of these in selected interviews this past weekend.
And the Canadian Taxpayers Federaton (CTF) identified similar themes in its landmark 140-page report entitled The Patient, The Condition, The Treatment released last fall.
Said Maz on the issue of sustainability: "The escalation of costs cannot continue unless there is enormous (economic) growth … all we're saying is that there's some choices to be made here."
And here's what the CTF had to say about sustainability in testimony before the Kirby Committee: "In the provincial capitals, health ministers - regardless of partisan stripe - have all stated that health spending increases that double or even triple annual revenue growth are unsustainable.
"Legislatures will be forced to chose between MRIs and text books or worse still heart surgeries versus cancer tumour resections."
Maz also had some definite ideas about the financing and delivery of health care services:
"We don't believe the answer lies in further rationing of services, but the answer lies in finding new ways of funding the health system and new ways and approaches of delivering services."
In The Patient, The Condition, The Treatment, the CTF expressed similar views:
"Health care funding must move from pay-as-you-go financing to sustainable pre-funding for each generation of Canadians."
"Governments must act quickly to involve new providers (including the private sector) in all facets of health care service delivery including technology purchases and major facility construction. Provincial experimentation should also be encouraged and supported whether it is on the financing or delivery side."
Mazankowski said he hopes his report "will stimulate thorough and mature debate … hopefully in a way that we can remove the rhetoric and the emotion."
In its summary, the CTF stated: "Health care is the number one social policy challenge for the next decade. But, the debate has been dominated by surrogates who have diminished the complexity of reform down to facile bi-polar country comparisons and left vs. right ideological disputes. Canadians yearn for an ideas-based discussion about all possible options for health care reform."
