e-Health -- should the user pay? Part 2

So, I'm heading home after the meet/greet luncheon with Michael Ignatieff, feeling chuffed -- just had some good food, took a picture with a potential Prime Minister and got a definitive answer for my question.
However, I habitually try to play the so-called "devil's advocate" role and found myself asking, is it really a big deal if user fees became a reality in Ontario? And when it does, can there be any reasonably pleasant side effects?

After some searching, I realize this could potentially be the needed wake-up call for many of us; people like myself tend to abuse anything we do not have to pay for, at the time/point of usage -- OK, I admit, if I'm staying in a hotel, I may leave the tap running as I polish the ivories, but as you can imagine, my habits would change when I got home!
In other words, if I know I have to pay, I'll try my best to be frugal -- if it doesn't cost me anything immediately...

So being a realist, my suggestion to the Health Minister of Ontario would be to at least give those who make the effort to turn off the tap,  a tax break; for example, if an across-the-board $1,000 user fee was levied annually on working Ontario residents, and I also paid a $1,000 annual membership fee at my local health/fitness club (something that I used snow, rain or shine), at least make it revenue neutral to my tax account with an equivalent credit at year end -- something similar has been implemented for the use of public transportation, so why not healthcare?

I'd regard it as unconscionable if I made the effort to stay healthy whilst my neighbor simply slaps the alarm clock across the room at 06:00 hours and turns the other cheeks, so to speak! Yet, we'll pay the same user fees at year's end.

I'd also be doing a disservice if I were to be reticent with regards to the various options available before we got to the point of user fees; I was really disturbed by an article sent to me by a friend -- here are some of the eye-popping revelations I read:

• the most dangerous place in Canada is a public hospital
• one in every 152 acute care patients dies because of "preventable adverse events"
• two in 10 patients contract a hospital-spread infection or are given the wrong medicine
• no Canadian CEO could keep his job if his company’s "defect rate" was even a small percentage of that in our government monopoly health-care system

I passionately feel that:

• the inefficiencies should be removed from the system before user pay is even considered
• people should be given access to tools such as EMRs, EHRs and PHRs, along with constant reinforcement messages/education sessions to help them maintain their health. 

Only when the above efforts have been exhausted should the Health Ministry think about implementing user fees, along with the associated tax breaks to both reward and encourage us, of course!

As with any system, regular maintenance tends to prevent breakdown and the abuse of repair facilities.