It Will Take More Than Money to Fix Health Care: Canadian Medical Association

Surgical instruments are used during an organ transplant surgery at a hospital in Washington on June 28, 2016. The Canadian Press/AP-Molly Riley

The president of the Canadian Medical Association says the new health funding deal struck between provinces and the federal government represents the biggest nominal injection of cash into Canada’s health system, but that won’t be enough to fix what’s broken.

The association compared the deal with other health agreements over the last two decades and found it to be the largest by a significant margin at about $16 billion in increases per year over 10 years.

The analysis also looked at whether such funding agreements have made a difference in the past.

Association president Dr. Alika Lafontaine says big investments do seem to have made a difference, but progress backslid when parties stopped working together.

He points to the $1 billion former prime minister Stephen Harper put toward lowering wait times, which appeared to make a fairly significant improvement

Now he says the problems faced by the health-care workforce are much more serious and it will take political will and co-operation to overcome them.