Alberta government going the wrong way on health care

Conservatives' real plan is to break system, pave way for private care

By David Eggen, Edmonton JournalJune 20, 2009 11:02 AM

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At one point in John Hughes' classic 1986 movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles, John Candy and Steve Martin carelessly turn off an exit ramp and end up travelling the wrong way on a four-lane highway.
When concerned citizens in another car try to tell them they are going the wrong way, John Candy is dismissive and arrogant, exclaiming to Steve Martin, "How would he know where we are going?" and so the two buffoons continue at full speed down the wrong way. Suddenly, two semi-trailer trucks racing side by side appear on the horizon and a head-on collision is imminent. But in the fine tradition of slapstick comedy, their car somehow scrapes between the two trucks and the hapless comedians continue with their misadventures.
Real life is not so forgiving, and there's nothing remotely funny about more health cuts in store for Alberta. Health Minister Ron Liepert and Alberta Health Services CEO Stephen Duckett--with Premier Stelmach calling directions from somewhere in the back seat--have sent us all hurtling down the wrong way with more cuts, and putting both our health and our pocketbooks in jeopardy.
Liepert, in his usual fashion, refuses to tell Albertans "where we are going" with his health-care plans. But what we have seen so far tells a pretty clear story.
A hiring freeze has been implemented, so hundreds of health-care jobs sit vacant. At the same time, overtime has been limited, which is leading to increased stress and exhausted staff. As a result, surgeries are being delayed and even cancelled, and Albertans are not getting the level of care they were before.
And not just so-called elective surgeries like joint replacement are being delayed. Surgeons are reporting the delay of cancer surgeries for multiple weeks due to the crisis. Plus, the vaunted Mazankowski Health Centre, our supposed jewel, sits empty awaiting health-care professionals to bring it to life.
Furthermore, Liepert is examining delisting medically necessary services, has ended universality for seniors' pharmaceuticals and downloaded costs for care in nursing homes onto seniors and their families.
You get a pretty clear picture of the government's trajectory. Stelmach, Liepert and Duckett are sending our health-care vehicle hurtling the wrong way at highway speeds.
Liepert and Duckett say they must make the cuts to save money, but most of these cuts only postpone an inevitable expense, or download the cost onto the individual.
Either way, these cuts will cost us all more in the end and the quality of our health care will suffer.
The government's warnings of "unsustainable health care" have returned, right on cue, to match the latest rounds of cuts.
As it happens, health expenditures in relation to gross domestic product in Alberta have stayed at between five and seven per cent for the last 15 years. We continue to compare favourably to other jurisdictions. The Canadian average is about 10 per cent, France and Switzerland are at about 11 per cent and the United States is at 15 per cent. To me, this sounds pretty sustainable.
This helps to reveal the real agenda behind Liepert's and Duckett's draconian actions. It is not about "saving medicare" or responding to the recession. People don't stop getting sick when the economy is weak.
The Alberta government's real plan is to destabilize our health-care system so it can implement private, for-profit experiments to "fix" medicare. They are purposefully breaking the health-care system so they can hire private contractors to repair it at inflated prices.
The research about private versus public health care is universally conclusive: private, for-profit health care costs more. A library full of studies have been done looking at the comparative costs -the Conference Board of Canada, Canadian Institute for Health Information, Wellesley Institute, Consumers' Association of Canada and the Parkland Institute have all done substantive research on the topic.
Their conclusions are the same: Canadians and Albertans would be wise to stick with a publicly financed, publicly administered, single-payer health-care system.
It is true that delivering quality public health care doesn't come without costs. And medicare is by no means perfect. Too many services are excluded, wait lists can be too long and still too many people fall between the cracks. But it can be improved affordably. Where there is a wrong way, there most certainly is a better way available, too.
What the Alberta government needs to do is give up on its misguided attempts to insert the profit motive into medicare, and commit once and for all to a publicly funded and delivered health-care system --which is what Albertans want.
We need to start putting our energies into improving health care, which we can do so without stretching the budget.
We need to look at new models for delivering primary care, such as nurse practitioners and teams of health professionals.
We need to expand the medicare umbrella so that it offers a more complete range of care--including pharmacare--to Albertans.
And we need to adopt more measures aimed at keeping people healthy in the first place, because as Tommy Douglas once said, "in the long run it's cheaper to keep people well than to be patching them up after they are sick."
Our main problem in Alberta is not the cost of our health-care vehicle, but the direction the government is driving the car. Albertans need to become more vocal; we need to shout as loudly as we can that the government is driving us the wrong way and demand that it turn the car around.
Call your MLA and tell them so. Join our campaign at friendsof medicare.ca.We need to get the message to government before the semis come bearing down on us.
David Eggen Is Executive Director Of Friends Of Medicare
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