A federal government decision to cut health care coverage for some refugee claimants is actually more expensive in the long-run than simply paying for their benefits upfront, Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews is warning in the latest salvo in the back-and-forth turf battle between the province and Ottawa.

In 2012, Ottawa clawed back health care funding for refugee claimants from 37 democratic countries people who, the federal government says, are likely to be making bogus claims. Asylum seekers whose claims are turned down are also cut off.

To the federal governments chagrin, Ontario decided to reinstate health coverage for all refugee claimants and pick up the tab itself. Ms. Matthews said Friday it is less expensive to allow these people full access to the health care system where they can get preventative treatment than to only give them care in emergencies.

Lets just pause for a moment and think about what the implementation of [the federal cut] means for frontline providers. It means that they have to say sorry, pregnant woman about to deliver baby, youre not covered, were not going to care for you, Ms. Matthews said at a health promotion event in Toronto. Do you really think our health care professionals will do that? Of course they will not, they should not, they cannot. So in the end, we were paying anyway but we were paying more than we would have had we provided better early care.

In the case of a child with a fever, for instance, Ms. Matthews said, it is cheaper for the system if that child is checked by a doctor early on than if it waits until the condition is so bad, it must visit an emergency room.

But federal Immigration Minister Chris Alexander fired back, arguing that providing health care for all refugees will only encourage those without legitimate claims to come to Canada.

It will force Ontario taxpayers and their families to line up for care behind failed asylum seekers, and it will make Canada and Ontario in particular a bigger magnet for bogus asylum seekers in the future, he said in a statement.

Earlier this week, Mr. Alexander said the money spent on benefits for refugee claimants without valid claims would be better used to help people with legitimate asylum claims travel to Canada.

Were very conscious of the fact that the most vulnerable, the most needed, the most impoverished, dont make it on our shores. They dont get a ticket on Air Canada. They dont even have a passport to make it, and they certainly dont show up in our airports. Those are the people we want to dedicate most of our resources to, he said in an interview. We were not able to do that in this pre-reform era because so much of our resources were absorbed by bogus claimants.

The health change is part of a larger overhaul of immigration policy designed to reduce the number of false claimants. Asylum seekers from the 37 countries also face fast-track hearings designed to eject as many people with bogus claims as possible, to clear the way for legitimate refugees.

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Cutting health care for refugee claimants expensive in long-run, Ont. Health Minister says