Rather than retool the basis of our country, why shouldn't the federal government be the one to butt out of Healthcare beyond transfer payments?

As Gilles Duceppe asked during the debates, why are there 10,000 Department of Health civil servants in Ottawa, none of which do something like adminstrate an actual hospital...

It's not as if a single federal department of Health superceding the provincial ones wouldn't need provincial bureaucracies to deliver medical care anyway...

Very well, JKelly, but we'd still be left with 13 different health cards for 30 million people who are entitled to basically identical medical care anywhere in Canada, and we'd still have to apply for a new card, at lord knows what cost, when we move to another province. It's the administrative costs that piss me off, not the necessary local bureaucracies that are in place to deliver actual medical services. The solution doesn't have to be federal either — it could be a collaboration among the provinces.

The solution is not to get rid of the provincial deparments which actually have a function and are constitutionally legitimate, it is rather to get rid of most of the Department of Health in Ottawa which has no serious function and is constitutionally illegitimate.

The problem is the feds not the provinces. ideally they should simply pack their Canada Health Act tent, exit the tax space and go home. But, in the real worl, it would be enough if they exited the tax space and let the Canada Health Act die its natural death.