Canada maybe on the right track regarding how to deal with rising health care costs in times of a recession

Excerpts:

Now that the province is in the throes of a major economic slump, there are fears that the government may delist more services to get ballooning health-care costs under control.

Caplan said delisting is "not an area I look to first" but acknowledged that all spending will be reviewed.
 
"We want to take a look at what we're doing and how we can do it better," Caplan said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press.

"If it doesn't make sense, we're going to stop doing it. If it makes sense, we're going to do more of it. And I think that's a fair kind of mindset to have."

It's unacceptable that the Liberals have already backed away from last year's promises to hire 9,000 more nurses and deliver $135 million in dental care for the working poor over three years, Horwath said.

"During a recession is probably when people will need health care even more. Stress levels go up, incomes go down, people aren't able to keep their health up in the way that they may have been able to do in the past."

The government must do more for seniors living in nursing homes, help hospitals that are cutting services and staff to avoid illegal deficits, and free up beds occupied by so-called "alternative level of care" patients who should be in long-term care or receiving home care, said Progressive Conservative critic Elizabeth Witmer, a former health minister.

Caplan said he hopes to trim costs by improving the quality of health care.

"All of the health-care literature tells us that the best way to be able to manage health-care costs is to have better health care - to have better quality and better accessibility," he said.

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