The reaction you may be hearing in the wake of former NDP finance minister Janice MacKinnon's diagnosis of an ailing health-care system seems based on how people feel about Janice MacKinnon.

Those who are conservative-minded love it when a former New Democrat - one who was once thought to be the logical successor to Roy Romanow, no less - comes around to the thinking that public health care is no longer sustainable ... even though this isn't exactly what Janice MacKinnon is saying in her report advocating health-care payments.

But angry New Democrats see her recent health report - commissioned by the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute, which social democrats view as akin to Vancouver's right-wing think tank, the Fraser Institute - as just the latest example of MacKinnon shilling for the interests of Prime Minister Stephen Harper or Premier Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party.

Adding to the palpable animosity that New Democrats already have towards MacKinnon is the fact that she is now treading on the sacred ground of public health care - a forbidden topic for most New Democrats who don't even distinguish between private health-care delivery (common in our health-care system in the form of dental, chiropractic, prescription drugs, home care, etc,) and private payment (which doesn't exist outside the aforementioned existing private elements of healthcare delivery).

MacKinnon's study advocated a form of private payment to offset rising costs - most likely, an income-tax surcharge of as much as three per cent of total income. As such, it might be more than just New Democrats displeased with being hit in the wallet.

That said, there are some very valid points emerging from MacKinnon's study that all of us need to seriously consider.

The premise of her report is based on the need to address the pending problems of an aging baby boomer generation demanding more of a health system that's already crowding out spending for areas like education. There is no doubt that seniors numbers will be increasing. And there's even less doubt that health-care budgets have sky-rocketed. In Saskatchewan, health costs are now a half-billion dollars more than the entire provincial budget 20 years ago. In the last five years alone under the Brad Wall government, health spending has increased by $1.45 billion, or 45 per cent.

And notwithstanding the venom the NDP has towards both MacKinnon and privately paid-for health care, she did reject any kind of user fee or applying the additional payments to those who could not afford them. So isn't she proposing a valid solution to a valid problem? Well, not according to one expert who has extensively studied this issue.

University of Regina head of political science Tom McIntosh - who served on the Romanow commission last decade - thinks MacKinnon has made the wrong diagnosis followed by the wrong prescription.

Read more here:

MANDRYK: MacKinnon misdiagnosed health care