Dear Editor:

The Star ("Tories Peddle Health-care Scam," April 18) rightly exposes the Harris government's latest attempt to bamboozle the public with its claim that health care spending "now accounts for 44 cents of every dollar of government program spending."

In the past, the government has reported health care spending as a percentage of total operating spending, not merely as a percentage of program spending (which excludes about $9 billion in spending on public interest debt). So it is surprising that more gullible reporters concluded that health care spending has gone through the roof.

For the record: health care spending as a percentage of total operating expenditures was 35% in 1998-8, 35.2% in 1998-9, 36.2% in 1999-00, and, according to the most recent data from the Ministry of Finance, 37.4% in 2000-2001.

This modest change comes despite an aging population and massive spending cuts in other areas of government activity. As well, provincial operating spending has become a smaller and smaller part of the economy (shrinking from 17.2% of the economy in 199-5 to 5.3% in 2000-01). It has also shrunk as a proportion of provincial revenues (from 38.2% in 1994-5 to 35.1% in 2000-2001).

The government seems to want to create a crisis in health care funding so they can turn health care over to the private corporations that fund the Conservative party. Unfortunately for us, the for-profit U.S. health care system shows that we will pay for this with increased costs and poor coverage.