Premier Wab Kinew has taken to Instagram to get public input on the design of upcoming plastic health cards.
A Thursday post shared three designs — an orange card with a buffalo, a yellow and blue card with a polar bear and a green card featuring a northern lights scene — and asked people to vote in a poll or comment about their favourite design.
Votes were to be collected until midnight Sunday, the post says, and the new design will be announced “shortly after.”
Four hours after the post was published, it had received 17,500 votes, with most people backing the northern lights design.
The NDP government’s first budget included money to switch to plastic health cards from paper. The budget did not specify how much the change would cost, but when the province was administering plastic proof-of-immunization cards during the COVID-19 pandemic, the cards cost $1.67 each.
Across Canada, only Manitoba and Alberta still use paper health cards.
In November 2023, the health department was dealing with a backlog of 24,453 applications that resulted in months-long waits for some Manitobans who wanted a health card. It forced residents to pay for care that would otherwise be free if they had their card.
By January, the backlog had dropped to 9,000-plus people and in May, the province said it had been cleared. The department had opened a hotline and added support staff to help Manitobans with their applications.
Manitoba Health’s website currently lists the wait time for health card coverage applications at two weeks.
Manitoba Health issued more than 232,000 health cards, handled more than 118,000 requests for address changes and 45,800 requests for status changes in the 2022-23 fiscal year.
malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
Malak Abas
Reporter
Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.
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