The GPO’s health plan takes a broad approach to wellness, with an emphasis on healthy communities, healthy lifestyles and a healthy environment, not just health care. Reducing toxins in our environment, addressing the social determinants of health and encouraging healthy lifestyle choices are important components of the Green Party’s health plan.

The Green Party believes the health care system should be publicly funded, publicly delivered and publicly accountable. The Canadian single-payer system is affordable, effective and provides care for everyone.

Yet, health care reform is urgently needed if we are going to have a health care system that is sustainable and viable in the future. The Green Party has a plan that will offer more choice, emphasize prevention and be accountable to the public.

To achieve these objectives, the Green Party of Ontario will:

■ Provide Ontarians in the lowest 75th percentile of income an additional health care allowance of $1,000 per person, phased in over five years at $200 per year, for purchase of prescription drugs and/or care from any practitioner mandated by the Regulated Health Professionals Act (RHPA) at an eventual cost of $9.75 billion by 2012. These professions include: physicians and surgeons, nurses, chiropractors, physiotherapists, naturopaths, audiologists, chiropodists, dental hygienists, dental technologists, denturists, dieticians, massage therapists, medical laboratory, midwives, occupational therapists, opticians, optometrists, respiratory therapists and dental surgeons.

■ Immediately increase the budget of the Ministry of Health Promotion, currently at 1%, to 2% of the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care’s budget. Since most illnesses result from lifestyle choices, the GPO believes that health promotion is fiscally prudent and will lead to improved wellness. These funds would be used to place nurses in the school system to promote healthy lifestyles and to assist in identifying youth at risk of long-term health problems.

■ Increase the funding and effectiveness of primary and preventive health care by:
● Creating a joint commission of stakeholders to explore best practices for implementation of preventive and primary health care by family doctors, with an emphasis on improved outcomes. This may include rewarding doctors who successfully assist their patients resolve risk factors such as obesity, smoking or uncontrolled high blood pressure.
● Increasing support and incentives for multidisciplinary clinics and practices that team doctors with nurses, dieticians, psychologists, counsellors, physiotherapists etc. This is particularly important for taking a holistic approach to mental health, addiction and lifestyle counselling.

■ Create incentives for the establishment of community-based nonprofit long-term care facilities to displace profit as the prime motivator in LTC facilities. Encourage development of multi-level facilities to decrease the current cruel practice of separating couples who have different care needs.

■ Expand the mandate of Community Care Access Centres (CCAC) to include monitoring, support and funding of informal caregivers, compensated at minimum wage, providing assisted daily living in the home. This will help seniors to stay in their homes longer and enable family and friends to provide basic, compassionate care for loved ones and double the number of informal homecare hours.

■ Legislate full and open disclosure of all P3 (public-private partnership) agreements for future development of health care facilities. We need a health care system that is not driven by ideology, but by what produces the best results efficiently and affordably.

■ Mandate that 50% of members of hospital boards are composed of health care professionals. The Green Party believes in a health system that is publicly accountable and empowers health practitioners at the local level and on the front lines to make more decisions by participating on the boards of health care institutions.

■ Provide fully refundable tuition for graduating family doctors who commit to working a year in under-serviced areas for every year of free tuition. The GPO will work with doctors to provide financial incentives to practise in under-serviced communities.

■ Increase the funding of midwifery training by $10 million over four years. This should allow women more choice by providing approximately 70 additional midwives to assist 1500 more mothers per year.