The health minister, Deb Matthews, is hurrying this morning to reassure those who hold the old red and white Ontario health cards. She says the cards are good and that they can still be used and that legitimate residents who still have the cards will not be denied medical care. Period. The semi-crisis in public understanding flows from an announcement yesterday that suggested the cards were about to be eliminated in a relatively brief phase-out period in which a user would get three notices. After that, no health care. Today however the minister says that while the government wants people to move to the photo ID card, the old ones will still be honoured The new cards came into use in 1995. There is an impression among some that only seniors still have the red and white cards. But kids who were born in, say, 1985, who got their cards when they were five or six, frequently still have them. Those people are now in their 20s and 30s. There are more than three million of the old red and white plastic pieces still out there. Only clearly fraudulent cards will be arbitrarily cancelled.
