Do we really need 13 health cards?

One law entitles all Canadians to health care everywhere in the country. How do people end up without coverage?

In February, it was reported that Saskatchewan Senator Pamela Wallin had an Ontario health card. This was supposedly a problem. On Wednesday, it was reported that in May, Ms. Wallin told her Senate overseers that she had no health card. This was odd, though entirely plausible (more on that in a minute). Ms. Wallin’s office, however, now insists she has a Saskatchewan health card, but declined to elaborate on when she received it.

It concerns me that Ms. Wallin seems to be trying to sneak her way out of a jam. It does not concern me in the slightest where her stupid health card comes from, or if she somehow falls short of the Saskatchewan or Ontario health ministries’ strict residency requirements.

The Senate’s residency rules are much vaguer, after all, and defensibly so in my view. If Saskatchewanians accept Senator Wallin as one of their own, then everything should be fine (accepting that the Senate exists in its current form). If they do not accept her as a Saskatchewanian, then everything is not fine. They shouldn’t need to see inside her wallet to judge.

Senators abusing expenses? Problem. Senators representing not so much their constituents as the vaguest whims of the Prime Minister’s Office? Big problem, no matter where they reside. Whether there’s a trillium or a wheat sheaf on Pamela Wallin’s health card, which affords her “free” health care in both provinces and every other? Only Canadians could get exercised about that.

I know all about it, believe me. Just as Ms. Wallin claims to have been, so was I once for- saken by Canadian medicare. In late 2001, I left Montreal for British Columbia, not knowing if I would return. early in 2002, Quebec’s very efficient health ministry tracked me down and notified me that my benefits had been summarily terminated, no appeal. This was quite alarming, given the three-month waiting period to register in a new province.

I clearly wasn’t eligible for coverage in B.C.; I had no in- tention of living their full-time, but I applied anyway. Assuming rejection, and never having heard back, I ended up moving to Toronto and waiting three months for the OHIP card I never should have given up. (Heads up, friends: If I ever spend another winter out west, I’m, ahem, “moving in to your spare room.”)

The saga recommenced years later, when a collections agency began harassing me to pay hundreds of dollars in B.C. health care premiums for coverage that had, it turned out, been granted. (Presumably my complete lack of claims was interpreted as proof of uncommon good health.) Many telephone calls later, the matter was finally resolved. I hope.

Crazy question: does a nation of 35 million people, all publicly insured under the terms of the same law, need 13 different health cards? Surely there are cost savings waiting to be realized in the provincial health care systems cooperating amongst themselves. Imagine if you could tell a website that you were moving from Newfoundland to Alberta to work for six months, and when you swiped your card at the walkin clinic in Fort McMurray, it just knew. There would be less incentive to cheat. The right province would get billed for the right thing at the right time. There would be a massive reduction in hassle all around. And nobody would care what was in Pamela Wallin’s wallet.

I’m sure it’s practically impossible for a dozen reasons. Ontario still hasn’t figured out its own electronic health records, after all. But it’s a worthy topic for a summer daydream, at least.