Get Well Canada news & insights

The new health money is a win for the personal finances of retirees. But it’s a different story for younger residents, who must pay an ever-growing amount in taxes for the medical needs of our aging population by comparison with what baby boomers paid for retirees when they were younger.

Post Media columnist Daphne Bramham featured Get Well Canada in a recent op-ed, highlighting Dr. Paul Kershaw's analysis of provincial medical and social spending. In the 1970s, provincial governments consistently spent more on social services and education than they did on medical care. Now the opposite is true.

The Hill Times featured the launch of Get Well Canada. Gen Squeeze founder Dr. Paul Kershaw: “By resisting provincial calls for even more medical spending, the Government of Canada has retained fiscal room to slow the flow of sickness into our clinics and hospitals because they are allowing room to invest where health begins,” in areas such as daycare, housing, and child care.

En collaboration avec Think Upstream, le Centre canadien de politiques alternatives, le Centre de collaboration nationale des déterminants de la santé et d'éminents chercheurs en santé de l'Université de Calgary et de l'Université Dalhousie, Generation Squeeze lance Get Well Canada, une alliance visant à investir là où la santé commence.

A new alliance of research and community leaders argues that Canada can’t achieve our health transformation and innovation goals so long as Premiers focus primarily on more money for medical care.

To fix our health care system, we need to focus more on the investments that will prevent illness and keep people well. And that’s more on the social side, that's child care, poverty reduction, housing investments, and so on.

We must focus more on the investments needed to prevent illness. Hospitals and clinics should be the last stops for health, not the first.

Canadians’ cost of living is skyrocketing and our medical system is on fire. Instead of dousing the flames, health ministers added fuel to the fire when they failed to agree on a plan to stabilize medical care at their most recent meeting. This failure reflects a lack of awareness that these twin crises are born from the same fundamental problem. For decades governments have bought into a myth that medical care is what most makes us healthy, ignoring science that shows social supports contribute more to our wellbeing.

Our universal medical care system is as much a part of Canadian identity as the Maple Leaf. When news reports consistently outline how this system is “in crisis,” there is understandable angst. Fixing the crisis requires that we recognize how personal finances – yours, mine and others – are deeply implicated. To slow the flow of illness into hospitals and clinics, governments need to grow investments that will ease the squeeze on the finances of Canadians – especially younger Canadians – more urgently than they add money for medicare.

John Ibbitson recently asked how Canada should adapt now that Canadians aged 65+ number 7 million given repercussions for medical care, long term care, etc. This is an important question. Generation Squeeze has been asking political leaders to consider the implications of an aging population for generational fairness for over a decade. But while Mr. Ibbitson deserves credit for raising the question, some of his solutions will lead today’s seniors towards a harmful legacy.