I've been on committees that have banged away at some of these issues for years. If I can make a suggestion, keep this simple.
Access to sickness benifits for people actively having cancer treatment, regardless of what their employment status was when diagnosed, should be 'doable'. It should also be possible to build a more flexible policy regarding temporary disability payments to cover us while we are trying to figure out if our bodies are ever going to recover enough to go back to work.
There has already been a fair bit of publicity about those of us that slip through the cracks and end up in dire financial difficulties. That issue tacks nicely onto the report that BCNA has just released regarding the costs of BC treatment. What they have stated in the report is that they have not made any allowances for loss of income when calculating their figures. If you start looking at the costs of having cancer apart from the out of pocket medical items, those figures would be truly shocking.
As far as the gap payments for private health--unfortunately that isn't a ministerial issue unless they want to start regulating what medicos can charge for services. They will not go there. Any changes like that would reflect across the whole health system.
Access to rehab services, particularly in rural and regional areas is a major, major issue. That also ties with the Patient Transport Assistance payments. I've been lobbying for ten years to have a more realistic limit brought in. The response from two successive health ministers has been 'If we lower the limit to 75km, then the people who live 74km away will still complain.' Seriously.
I don't know what everyone else thinks, but I reckon you are better off attacking one issue, or two that tie tightly together. My vote probably goes to the problems with social security. Marg.
