Medicare Choices

Finally, it's happened, the Liberal government has fallen through a non-confidence vote that the NDP has initiated in refusing to support the May 1 budget introduced at Queens Park by Finance Minister James Sousa. Premier Kathleen Wynne will now have to go before the public to face election as premier of the province; she has acted long enough as the unelected premier of a Liberal government whose too-long and too-troubled governance of the province has been decidedly less than stellar.

Now seeking re-election Kathleen Wynne has made a commitment that if she and her party are returned to power she will set up a panel yet again on reviewing IVF funding. Partial funding, in any event. One initial round for approximately four thousand women unable to conceive on their own, at a projected cost of $40-million annually for a process that has a low success rate, but the prospects of which has fertility clinics rubbing their hands with gleeful satisfaction.

Wanda Goodwin / Toronto Star file photo

Patients' eggs are deposited into vials at a GTA fertility centre as part of the IVF process, which the Liberal government has agreed in principle to partially pay for.  

Should this happen, a provincial program that has been criticized for not covering certain critical tests like the PSA test for prostate cancer for men in the general population who want to be proactive will decide that IVF funding is universally required. Nor can it see its way clear to providing certain cancer drugs for patients desperately hoping for some relief from their life-ebbing condition, even a life minimally prolonged for whom the cost is prohibitive to pay out of pocket.

But costly in vitro fertilization procedure to satisfy the yearning of infertile women unable to conceive normally ... no problem. Can Ontario learn anything by looking at Quebec's program? Possibly, possibly not, since no statistics have been maintained outlining the success or lack of, with that expensive program to satisfy the family needs of those incapable of conceiving. But there's a certain creep inherent in providing aid to people to pay for costly medical services.

It starts out low-balling the numbers involved and then somehow demands increase and providers can't see their way through to lowering expectations and the program develops and expands and suddenly it opens itself to not only heterosexual families but homosexual ones too. Where it should be questioned why, if people are so wildly driven to parenthood they cannot make the financial sacrifices that IVF requires to commit to their dreams of bearing a child of their own.

The argument of multiple births through the implantation of multiple fertilized eggs in the hopes that one or possibly two will take, leading to multiple births where the babies suffer compromising health conditions that require more tax dollars to serve their needs can be solved by making it illegal for IVF clinics to implant more than one fertilized egg per round of treatment. They would balk at that, because people paying their own fare want the biggest bang for their buck.

How does it make good management sense for governments to decide that they cannot or will not extend the drug formulary to cover drugs, for example, for rare chronic illnesses that can make the difference in people's lives, or newly approved drugs that prove that they are capable of extending life and alleviating discomfort and pain for fear of further burdening an already straitened public health system, yet extending a helping tax dollar to produce children represents a sagacious use of tax money?

Shouldn't such decisions take into account urgency of need and compassionate reaction by government health agencies using public tax dollars for the greatest effectiveness? Should the NDP by some miracle, win the June provincial election, funding of IVF will become a certainty. It is hugely doubtful that would be the case should the Progressive Conservatives come to power. But the Liberals? Sure thing!