In an election held during a pandemic, everyone promises better health care
Bolstering senior homes common theme after COVID-19 took heavy fatal toll
Health care is front and centre in all the major parties' platforms in the 2020 B.C. election, which is understandable given the COVID -19 pandemic.
Promises to bolster seniors care — a glaring weak spot in the pandemic — and to improve access to health services are prominent in all three main party platforms, with few points of differentiation.
THE PLATFORMS
■ NDP: The party's platform opens with a promise to spend $44 million hiring and training 7,000 new front-line workers for long-term care and assisted-living facilities, among a long list of commitments “to fix health care” after 16 years under the previous Liberal governments. Hiring doctors and nurses, establishing more urgent primary care centres, personalized care through primary care networks and improving e-health and telehealth services are among them. A 10-year plan to improve cancer treatment, a promise to fight for national pharmacare and ramping up action on the opioid crisis are among its other commitments.
■ B.C. Liberals: A promise to spend $1 billion over five years building new long-term care homes is the party's big commitment to seniors, in a platform that also calls for improved access to services and new facilities. The platform promises a $7,000-a-year tax credit for the cost of home care and a central registry to provide advanced care plans for elders. The Liberals include their own promise to create more primary care networks and community health centres and improve access to care by encouraging innovative practice models and segue from the pandemic in learning new ways of training health care's future workforce.
■ B.C. Greens: The party's big promise on seniors long-term care is to begin a shift to a mix of public, non-profit and co-operative care facilities and away from for-profit ownership of some centres. The Greens promise to allocate $1 billion over four years to address mental health within the Medical Services Plan, better support to address the opioid crisis, continue the rollout of primary care networks, action on prescription drug costs and create a balance in services between acute and preventive care.
ANALYSES
“Our No. 1 issue in the election is still COVID-19,” said Shinder Purewal, a professor in political science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. For most people, he said, that equates to “more health services and more money,” which the main parties are responding to.
Purewal said seniors also consistently turn out to vote in larger numbers, “so you want to take care of people who are actually going to vote.”
Parties are trying to appear different than the other parties by arguing which one is really doing more about building a new acute care hospital in Surrey or a hospital addition in Richmond, said Sanjay Jeram, a senior lecturer in political science at Simon Fraser University.
“Everyone's going to be stepping over each other,” said Jeram, undergraduate program chair in SFU's political science department.
“No one's going to let the other outbid them on (health care). It will be an issue, but I don't think any party is going to come out look ing unique compared to another.”