A new survey suggests Canadians like the idea of expanding medicare to cover such things as homecare and prescription drugs. But they don't like most of the ideas put forward so far about how to pay for such a program expansion.

CTV News Staff

A new survey suggests Canadians like the idea of expanding medicare to cover such things as home care and prescription drugs. But they don't like most of the ideas put forward so far about how to pay for such a program expansion.

The Goldfarb Report Update was conducted by Millward Brown Goldfarb to evaluate how Canadians would respond to some of the suggestions made in a recently-released Senate report on medicare, called "The Health of Canadians -- The Federal Role," known to many as the Kirby Report.

The survey found that Canadians believe a national home care program deserves to be a top priority when changing the health-care system in this country. Six in 10 Canadians feel a national program to provide care for patients in their own homes rather than in hospitals deserves high priority.

Implementation of a national pharmacare program to pay much of the cost of prescription drugs is also a high priority for 51 per cent of respondents. But a national dental care program is seen as less important; only 43 of respondents thought that was a high priority.

Finding a way to control the increasing costs of health care services was not considered a high priority, especially if it means reducing the levels of coverage provided to Canadians.

Nor surprisingly, Canadians over the age of 50 are more likely to place a high priority on home care and pharmacare than younger Canadians, while Canadians under 35 place greater importance on expanding the services covered by health care than do older Canadians.

Residents of Quebec are most likely to give a high priority to home care (65 per cent), while those living in the Atlantic province are most likely to decide that pharmacare is a high priority (57 per cent).

Not ready to pay

While Canadians are looking for improvements in the health care system, they do not appear ready to pay more for expanded services. The survey found that there is widespread opposition to increasing the GST, instituting user fees or health care premiums, or increasing the role of private sector companies to pay for the reforms.

A full 62 per cent of Canadians strongly oppose the Kirby Senate report's suggestion of raising the GST to 8.5 per cent, with those in the West the most likely to strongly oppose the idea (70 per cent). At the same time, there appears to be little support anywhere for the idea of user fees. Around 44 per cent of all Canadians strongly oppose the idea and just 17 per cent strongly support it.

Nor did respondents like the Senate report idea of introducing health care premiums. Respondents were asked whether they supported a dedicated tax that would see Canadians pay somewhere between 50 cents and $4 per day for health care coverage, depending on household income. Just 16 per cent strongly support such a premium, while 45 per cent strongly oppose. Again, those in the West were most likely to be strongly opposed (52 per cent).

Increasing the role of private sector companies in the delivery of health services does not appear to appeal to the public at large either, as just 21 per cent strongly support this suggestion.

Despite their unwillingness to directly pay for health care improvements, there is consensus that the status quo is unacceptable. Fewer than one in five (18 per cent) strongly support maintaining the current system as is.

The Kirby Senate report recommended providing the health system with an additional $5 billion a year, arguing that Canada's medicare system is not fiscally sustainable at existing funding levels.

The Goldfarb survey concludes that, with such widespread opposition to taxes or premiums, "the challenge for governments will be to raise money from other sources or reallocate current expenditures to meet the needs of the health care system."

This Goldfarb Report survey of 1,000 Canadians was conducted between Nov. 1 and 6, 2002. Results are considered statistically accurate within 3.2 percentage points, 19 times in 20.