The Ontario government is trying to buy votes.
They are creating "niche" programs to fund relatively inexpensive projects that will only affect a very small portion of the population (drugs for healthy young adults, IVF for same-sex couples, etc.) in order to win votes, but are not funding expensive, core things that are required by a lot of people (eg. hospital beds, nursing homes, doctors, nursing staff, physiotherapy, drugs, etc.). Its just to buy votes.
Multiple hospitals are routinely spending months at over 100% bed space capacity. They close down hospital beds and force ORs to "go on holiday" over the summer months in order save money (obviously increasing surgery wait times). They shut down CT or MRI scanners on evenings/weekends/nights (except for emergencies of course) even though they could easily scan people on waitlists in order to save money. They are understaffing nurses and cutting physician budgets. There's a bloating bureaucracy with layers and layers of bureaucrats telling front-line staff what they can't do. It's gotten much worse over the last 5-10 years - I'm a physician in Ontario and I see it happening and anyone in health care can tell you the same thing.
One person on this forum mentioned not being funded for remicade. This is a routine thing. They won't pay for some very expensive biologics (or cancer drugs, etc.) even when there's good evidence that they are good - it's completely a financial thing. Physicians (especially oncologists, rheumatologists, etc.) spend hours writing letters or calling drug companies and government agencies begging for their patients to get limited use codes for these drugs.
There was that sad and well-publicized case of the teenager who died waiting for a stem cell transplant. She actually had a donor and we have the expertise to do it - they just needed the funding from the government to do the case. Physicians had been writing the government bureaucrats for years telling them about the funding problem (like so many other underfunded problems). Of course they did absolutely nothing until this poor girl died and it made the news.
http://globalnews.ca/news/2678113/ontario-teen-who-died-waiting-for-stem-cell-transplant-begged-government-to-cut-wait-list/Anyways, I'll stop my ranting... My initial point was to say that for FI people, it is actually worthwhile to consider potential health care costs despite our "universal health care". Even with our "universal health care", if you get a chronic disease (diabetes, heart disease, and even some cancers now), you will quite likely have to pay for some costs such as medications, support devices, hired help, physiotherapy, etc. You may also need to pay for costs of ageing (nursing home or additional help at home).
