Most people do not like to pay new fees or taxes, and indeed many people try to avoid paying more by any means possible, because it’s a financial pain and is rather unpleasant to deal with.
Unfortunately, to live in this society with the level of services and programs that are available to us as Canadians, a certain level of taxation has to be expected. After all, these services are not free, particularly in health care.
Arguably, Canada has one of the best medical systems in the world, where all citizens can have access to publicly-funded health care, without paying huge premiums to insurance companies or fearing a simple hospital procedure can bankrupt you.
There are challenges to offering a public medicare system as we have, of course, one being that health care is very expensive, and in Saskatchewan, it takes the biggest chunk of the provincial budget of any public service.
Within this context then, the Sun Country Health Region recently announced they were taking a measure that may result in some misgivings on the part of health care workers in the region, namely parking fees will be instituted at all 28 health care facilities in the southeast, at the rate of $1 per employee per shift to park at the health care facility, starting on Sunday, Feb. 7.
On the face of it, employees may be forgiven for being upset that they have to pay for the privilege of coming to work, and they may question just how much money this could possibly raise for the health region.
As part of their rationale for bringing in the parking fees, the region states in a memo sent to employees on Dec. 30, “during a time of budget restraint, SCHR chooses to use revenue from the Ministry of Health for health care services rather than to maintain parking lots.”
Thus, they will take the fees paid through this new policy to help pay for the cost of maintaining and upgrading parking lots, without using monies which are slated for health care services. For some facilities, it might be a little difficult to say that the $3 or $4 raised is going to help the region not reduce health care programs, which cost considerably more, but the district does say they can use the funds where they’re needed around the health region.
The intent, which is to use health care dollars for health care services, is a good one, but the question remains whether this way will raise much money, or if it’ll just succeed in ticking off health care employees? — Greg Nikkel
