Health care is an area of government that voters experience up close and personal.
Whether you’ve sat waiting in emergency with a child whose temperature won’t go down, tried to get home care for an aging parent or searched in vain for a family doctor, health care impacts everyone directly.
It’s no surprise, then, that improving access to that care is at the top of all parties’ to-do lists for health care.
Better care of seniors is among the NDP’s priorities when it comes to health care, said Bowinn Ma, the party’s candidate in North Vancouver-Lonsdale. “We know that nine out of 10 seniors care homes throughout the province do not receive an adequate level of funding to provide a basic minimum level of care,” she said.
The NDP will boost that funding, she said, as well as increase funding for home support and increase the scope of services provided so seniors can stay at home longer.
The NDP is also critical of what they call the Liberals’ failed plan to increase access to family doctors. “We know it hasn’t worked,” said Ma, citing the approximately 700,000 people in B.C. who still don’t have a family doctor – “myself included.”
The party plans to address some of that demand for health care through the creation of new “urgent care centres” which would include nurse practitioners and other health care professionals as well as doctors. But so far, NDP leader John Horgan hasn’t said how many of those centres would be built or where.
The party also plans to create a new ministry of mental health and addiction, to focus on those issues. MSP premiums – which the party points out have increased over the past decade of Liberal government – would be scrapped.
The NDP would fund its increases to the current $18-billion health-care budget by increasing taxes on individuals who make over $150,000.
Jane Thornthwaite, Liberal incumbent for North Vancouver-Seymour, says most people she hears from about health care are concerned about mental health – particularly for children and youth. Thornthwaite points to the HOpe Centre dedicated to mental illness and recent opening of the Carlile Centre for youth with mental illness and addictions at Lions Gate Hospital and plans for a one-stop shop for youth in Lower Lonsdale as important steps in the right direction. “I feel pretty good we’re on the right track,” she said.
Thornthwaite added in response to a report from B.C’s seniors advocate that pointed out shortfalls in residential care homes, the Liberals announced $500 million in extra funding to ensure 3.36 hours of care per day for each resident.
Like the NDP, the Liberals plan to increase access to primary health care partly through expanding the scope of what other professionals, like nurse practitioners, can offer to patients.
Earlier this year, the Liberals announced plans to cut MSP premiums by 50 per cent and phase out the premiums at some point in the future.
On Tuesday, the Green Party also released its health care platform, focussing largely on prevention of health problems. Among the party’s promises are a commitment to a ministry responsible for health promotion and active lifestyles, as well as a ministry dedicated to mental health and addictions.
Like the other political parties, expanded access to primary health care through professionals other than doctors is on the Greens’ to-do list. The party also plans to take a careful look at the balance between funding acute health-care needs and preventative health care – with the goal of shifting more health care dollars into prevention.
That just makes sense, said Richard Warrington, the Green Party candidate in North Vancouver-Lonsdale. “Healthier people have to use the health-care system a lot less. Sixty is the new 40.”
The Green Party also plans to bring in measures to discourage tobacco and alcohol consumption – although it doesn’t say what those measures would be.
“Personally I think that would be a heck of a good idea,” said Warrington.
