Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the number in front of me, but we have a number of staff that run the Supplementary Health Benefits Program. We believe that the new program would cost $200,000 to $300,000 to administer. Thank you.

Thank you. The proposal that we have, that’s under discussion and we will continue to have that discussion to hear out what the Members have to say. This policy has a suggestion for a cap, and also we are working on a catastrophic drug coverage and other programs, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

One of the reasons why we want to make this change is to bring in those people who are excluded. Yes, the option is there to bring them in without making any changes to anything else. Then we have to put in extra money. We believe it will cost two to three million dollars to bring them back in. But the thing is, as the Member for Hay River South mentioned already, the health care budget has been going up at about 8 to 10 percent every year even if we change nothing. The cost of delivering, the cost of human resources, the cost of health care is going up by 8 percent. Our budget has doubled but...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I did hear about the situation that the Member is describing and we are investigating that. Thank you.

Because, Mr. Speaker, this is the non-insured program and the non-insured program is not where everybody gets service, regardless of their ability to pay. That’s insured service. Mr. Speaker, we are looking at including people who are excluded and asking those on top of the income threshold to make a contribution.

Mr. Speaker, the Member is concerned about high cost of drug expenditures and we know that there are some outliers and there are some people on the border that will be hard hit. So we are working on and those things are addressed by a cap. So that’s something that we need to address...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; there is a provision there that would allow me to go back to the Cabinet for revision. We heard and analyzed and reviewed the feedback that we got from the public, and based on the analysis we had, we did not conclude that we had to go back to Cabinet for revision, but we did go to the Cabinet with options on what we have heard. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member is aware, when we went to public consultation on this in April we just wanted to talk about the idea of it. Then people asked for specific options for income threshold and we offered $30,000 threshold to start and then $50,000. Assuming that the income threshold is at $50,000 for single and moving up progressively, we believe that this program will still provide 80 percent of the people a very good coverage of extended health. Thank you.

Right now, as the program exists, we have a real working mother on Facebook every day. I got on Facebook six months ago. This lady posts every day. She says she’s a single mother with two kids. I need a job with a dental plan. I need a job with a dental plan. And I go, there’s a lady with two kids and she is struggling to pay for our dental care. Under the existing system it is totally possible for somebody making $500,000 a year -- and there are people who make $500,000 a year, good on them -- $200,000, $300,000 with no expenses and they get 100 percent coverage. To me, that is not fair.

Mr. Speaker, the plan is that once a decision is made as to the implementation of this policy, we will be going for RFP to find a service provider such as Blue Cross or any other insurance companies. They are equipped and trained and set up to deliver a program like this. They do that for our other existing GNWT program, as well as the GNWT employee program. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The fact of the matter is, we have a supplementary benefits program. The changes we are proposing are not cost-cutting measures. At the same time, we need to make sure that the costs are affordable and reasonable. What we are trying to do is we are realigning the Supplementary Health Benefits Program for non-aboriginal people. What we have now is we cover those who are over 60, and those who have a chronic condition, and those who make under $30,000. We have a group of people among non-aboriginal people who are excluded. The changes we are proposing are to bring them on stream.