Paying for Healthcare

Is it only me, or do you also see a daily torrent of articles, blogs, television documentaries and panels of experts all repeating the same problem? “Ontario’s healthcare system is in crisis.” Long wait times for surgery, even longer waits in the emergency room, no family doctors, whole segments of the population unable to afford or sometimes even access needed care – the list keeps growing.

The complaining seems endless, but what I don’t see yet is a detailed, well-planned strategy to remedy this crisis. All the finger pointing between the provincial and federal governments isn’t doing much to help overcome these barriers, because the solution always ends up being the same: money.

Perhaps we should look at how other countries have managed this problem. In 1930, Ireland established the Irish Free State Hospital Sweepstakes with the singular goal of financing Irish hospitals. Despite a few hiccups on the way (the three main founders became quite rich) the Sweepstakes became hugely popular and raised a significant amount of money.

Potentially winning tickets were drawn at random and each ticket was assigned to a horse that was scheduled to run in one of several major horse races in the U.K. As the Sweepstakes grew, holding a ticket with the winning horse’s name yielded enormous cash prizes.

Eventually the Sweepstakes declined in popularity and it was ended in 1987, leaving almost 500,000 pounds remaining unclaimed.

Would a similar scheme work in Ontario? Yes. We already have a vast array of lotteries, online gambling sites and betting opportunities, all of which operate under the umbrella of OLG, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation. Here are a few eye-popping numbers:

• In the fiscal year 2023-2024, OLG generated $9.3 billion dollars from all forms of gaming activity.

• In the same fiscal year, OLG delivered $2.4 billion dollars in net profit to Ontario.

OLG states in its annual report that some of the revenue goes to “supporting hospitals,” but I was unable to determine an exact figure from the financial statements. Regardless, here’s my suggestion to help ease the healthcare crisis: change the OLG’s existing legislation and mandate that the corporation provide the provincial healthcare system a minimum of one billion dollars from its net revenue each year. The money is there.

A billion dollars may not immediately solve all the problems listed above, but I suspect it will go a long way.

Please contact me — I’d be very interested in what you think about this idea.