Medicare Makeover: A Response to Peer Commentaries

In responding to the Canada Health Act reforms proposed in Medicare Makeover, our peers provide valuable insights and suggestions. We appreciate, for instance, underscoring complexities inherent in implementing our call for evidence-based processes to define publicly-funded services and concerns regarding variation in accessibility and coverage standards across Canada. While some responses advocate for greater federal direction, we argue that fractured accountabilities have contributed to current challenges. It is essential that reforms establish a clear line of accountability: the federal government must ensure provinces, territories and Indigenous governments implement transparent processes to set standards for reasonable access and coverage and, in turn, provincial, territorial and Indigenous governments must be accountable for delivering on those standards to their voters.