SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - After years of heated public debate, the GNWT has withdrawn its controversial proposal for supplementary health benefits.

Health and Social Services Minister Sandy Lee announced Oct. 29 the policy initiative has been rescinded.

"I wouldn't call it a stop," Lee said. "We just came up with other things and different ways of moving these changes to extended health benefits forward."

The main goal of the policy initiative was to cover the working poor - more than 2,000 people without supplementary health benefits or third-party coverage.

However, the rescinded policy met intense opposition, particularly from seniors who now get 100 per cent coverage if they don't have third-party health coverage.

The changes would have combined three existing health benefits programs - for those 60 years of age and over, indigent people and those with specified medical conditions.

The rescinded policy would have given all non-aboriginals and non-indigenous Metis access to services, such as coverage for prescription drugs, medical supplies, and dental and vision care. (Aboriginal people and indigenous Metis are covered by federal programs.)

Coverage would have been provided to everyone up to a certain income level. Above that, recipients would have paid some of the cost.

"Of course, I'm not surprised that people had a lot to say about this," Lee said.

The minister said a joint working group of three ministers and three regular MLAs appointed in May has made 11 recommendations to improve the existing programs in a report tabled Oct. 29.

"I believe that we arrived at this as a result of the conversations we had for the last three years," she said. "I think this is more palatable now because we went through three years."

Tom Wilson, president of the NWT Seniors Society, is pleased the policy has been rescinded, saying seniors felt "picked on" by the proposal.

"We said, 'If you need to raise money, why don't you just go for a general tax increase so everyone gets hit?'" he said.

Wilson hopes seniors who had threatened to leave the NWT because of the proposed policy will now stay put.

Hay River South MLA Jane Groenewegen, who co-chaired the joint working group with Lee, said changes are going to happen in a different way.

"It's just not going to get done as a wholesale policy where every initiative under this policy is going to advance in concert at the same time," Groenewegen noted.

Among other things, the GNWT will now begin work on developing a strategy for cheaper generic drugs; eliminating the 2004 grandfathering of extended care benefits; requiring use of third-party insurance as the first option; and lowering costs by ensuring parity with the federal non-insured health benefits program.

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