Health spending is getting a boost
Problems battled over in election bring action
Nova Scotia’s Liberal government has re-introduced a $10.5-billion budget for 2017-18 with a slight increase in health spending after a spring election that focused on a lack of doctors and long wait times for care.
Overall, the majority government has added $6.2 million for health – a tiny fraction of the $4.2 billion annual departmental budget – to the totals released in an April 27 budget that was shelved due to a May 30 election.
Meanwhile, an unexpected clean-up operation on a waterfront development in Halifax is consuming $4.7 million that wasn’t in the pre-election calculations. Overall, there is $19 million more in spending than in April’s document.
The budget still has a $21.3-million surplus, but that’s $4.6 million lower than the original budget due to a drop in revenue from income tax and the increase in departmental spending.
It’s the second budget in a row with a surplus, though the opposition parties have both criticized the Liberals for neglecting social programs for people who are sick, receive care in nursing homes or are living with physical and intellectual disabilities.
Finance Minister Karen Casey said the budget document “builds” on the earlier budget and fulfills the Liberal promises to deliver back-to-back surpluses and lower taxes.
“We made some difficult, but necessary, decisions to live within our means. At the same time, government made key investments in communities across the province,” she said.
“Nova Scotians ... want more timely access to primary care and to family doctors. They want shorter wait times for surgeries, and they want better access to mental health services.”
The extra health spending includes $2.7 million for orthopedic knee and hip surgeries, $2.0 million for mental health, $800,000 to assist people who need cancer drugs and have limited private insurance coverage, and an added $800,000 for the opioid use and overdose program.The budget keeps the $2.4 million promised in April to support the recruitment and retention of doctors. The funding creates 10 new places in the family residency program at dalhousie University and opens 10 new spaces a program that assists international doctors in establishing practices.
There’s also an additional $2.5 million for the Atlantic Fisheries Fund, a joint program with Ottawa that funds research and innovation in the fish and seafood sector.
The Liberals are keeping a promise to reduce taxes by an average of $160 for a half million low and middle-income earners.
Over the past two years, stagnant funding and delayed spending on health facilities has accompanied stories of bursting hospital pipes, shortages of family doctors and – over the past winter – a dying patient left to languish for over six hours in the hallway of an overcrowded emergency department.
Earlier this year, the suicides of three young students in Cape Breton prompted calls for more prevention and support programs. The budget adds money for social workers, guidance counsellors and mental health clinicians.
“during the last campaign, Nova Scotians said clearly that mental health was a priority for them,” said Casey in her speech. “We will hire more clinicians, put more support in underserviced areas, and cut wait times for mental health care.”
The province’s net debt is about $15 billion, which is $15,860 per person. The province is still projecting a series of surpluses extending into 2020-21, with the goal of reducing debt to 30 per cent of gross domestic product by 2024.
New money for health care will reduce surgical wait times and improve access to mental health care and addictions services, Finance Minster Karen Casey said Tuesday afternoon.
Fresh from delivering her first provincial budget, Casey said the government added slightly more than $6 million in health care spending than was presented in the April budget, prior to the spring election.
The April budget was tabled in the legislature but was never approved because of the election call that came almost immediately afterward.
Casey said the new money represents an $82-million increase in healthcare spending over last year and will see reduced wait times for orthopedic surgeries while offering new pre-habilitation services to help patients prepare for surgery.
“And that’s based on programs that Nova Scotians were telling us is needed and wanted,” she said.
The government also announced $846,000 to establish a new take-home therapies cancer program to help pay for high insurance deductibles and co-payments for cancer patients who need to take the medications at home.
It is also rolling out $799,000 more, for a total of $1.36 million this year for “opioid use and misuse” and to expand addiction treatment programs to help eliminate wait lists.
“We heard from Nova Scotians that that was a real issue here in the province,” Casey told the Truro Daily News, following her budget delivery in the House.
Although opposition Conservative leader Jamie Baillie and NDP leader Gary Burrill both criticized the government for failing to provide new money for doctors and primary health care, Casey said 10 more seats have been added to the Dalhousie Medical School, making a total of 46 seats.
As well, she said, the province has introduced an internship program that will allow medical students to work out in the community with family doctors for 48 weeks to both increase community coverage and assist with their training.
“We know that there are active recruitments going on in all communities across Nova Scotia,” she said. “So there certainly have been lots of things that have been added to ensure that the doctor recruitment initiatives that are in place, continue.”
Another highlight of the day from Casey’s perspective includes an additional $750,000 for the pre-primary program, bringing this year’s total to $4.5 million.
“All the research tells us, and we know as educators, that getting four-year-olds into a playbased but somewhat structured environment improves their state of readiness so much before they start primary,” she said. “So it’s important to give parents that option.”
Overall, Casey, who is also the Colchester North MLA, described her first budget delivery as “encouraging and exciting,” especially because it was the Liberal government’s second consecutive balanced budget.
“We made some difficult decisions in the first four years of our mandate to try to improve the fiscal health of the department,” she said. “To try to live within our means, to not spend more than we had, to not burden the debt for our future generations.”