Thursday, March 7, 1968 tt i «. uN° W Wl C°me t0 Medicare a"d ^ lo°ks as though now since the Minister of Health has made an announcement that we will have no Medicare in this Prnv.W by July the first. We have 57.8% of the population, I think he safd, now covered and apparently nothing has been done. e eu We had hoped that after prolonging this for an extra year that some action WOUid ™ !?ken an.d thls sPeclal Committee appointed would repotr favourabel to wards Medicare We f.nd now that two of the provinces of Canada , Saskatchewan and British Columbia will enter the plan, and we in Prince Edward Island alone with the other Provinces will be paying our share in income tax towards the carrv ing out of this program in these two rich provinces. The former government realized that Medicare was coming into effect event- tually, that we wanted to give medical services to the elderly people of our prov¬ ince as a stop gap until such time as Medicare was brought into effect. So we made arrangements with the - Blue Shield to cover our elderly people at that time at a cost of $31.00 per person, and we covered all those that had been receiving Old Age Assistance from 65 to 70. We covered all those that were receiving Old Age Security over the age of seventy, and we covered those that were receiving disability, blind, mother's allowances, and other social assistance. But what do we find now, we find that those people that are receiving Old Age Security have been turned down right and left, because that the government claims that these were never to be included. But we never turned anyone down that required this that needed it, and I think if the government are not going to put in Medicare program along with some of the other provinces that surely all the Old Age Pensioners should be covered, the disabled, and the others who are receiving assistance from this Prov¬ ince. (Applause) I think this plan is working all right. If my information is right we received a rebate on the $31.00 that we had overpaid. I am not sure of that — somebody mentioned there was a rebate came in. It should cover anyone over 65 years of age because these people cannot get any other plan, and we know with the cost of living today that the amount of money these people are getting from their pen¬ sions is not sufficient. I hope the government will operate a plan to at least these people in for now and possibly later on they can inaugurate some plan to take in all these low-wage earners in this Province. I saw in the paper the other day that the net debt of this province was $84,579. Hon . T. Earle Hickey : $84,000,000. Henry W. Wedge : Oh that is wrong. I will have to add more to it. I took this out of the paper. They call this the net debt. It seems to me when an external audit was taken after the former government went out of power, which is the usual pro¬ cedure, it seems to me the net debt was $49,000,000. Several Members: OHHHHHHHH! Hon . Cecil Miller : Where did you read that? Henry W. Wedge : There was another figure that was mentioned, of $60,000,000. Hon . Cecil A. Miller : $99,000,000. Henry W. Wedge : This is wrong then, this is not the net debt? Hon . T. Earle Hickey : No it is not the net debt, it is the gross debt. Henry W. Wedge : It is the gross debt? Well, regardless of that it looks as though the government has gone in debt nineteen or twenty million dollars over the last year. (Laughter) Now I cannot understand how they would do that because they got four, or five, or six extra millions of dollars from the Federal Government, some¬ thing we never got before, and they still go in the red nineteen million dollars. Now what have we got to show for it? We were criticized for running up the debt to forty, fifty, sixty million or whatever... . Hon . Cecil A. Miller : Seventy, eighty, ninety, ninety-nine. —203—