Fort Saskatchewan

'I'm starting to get angry': Eggen

Friends of Medicare takes its protest over mental-health cuts to premier's Ft. Sask. office

By Jodie Sinnema, Edmonton JournalSeptember 26, 2009


Isaac McNeill believes his family wouldn't exist without help from Alberta Hospital.
McNeill has bipolar disorder that is managed well with medication and an excellent doctor. But his father and grandmother each spent time getting well in one of the hospital's mental-health beds.
So with the projected closure of 246 mental-health beds at that hospital, McNeill and his wife and three kids joined hundreds of others to protest radical changes the government is making to Alberta's health system. "If it wasn't for Alberta Hospital, my family wouldn't be the way it is," said McNeill, carrying four-year-old daughter Sydney on his shoulders while his wife, Jennifer, kept an eye on two-year-old Jacob and five-month-old Ethan. "There's no way that this government should be cutting money from situations like that."
Between 400 and 500 gathered for a noon-hour rally organized outside Premier Ed Stelmach's constituency office in Fort Saskatchewan.
Many expressed concerns about 300 hospital-bed closures expected in Edmonton and Calgary, a nursing shortage the health region denies, and the unclear plans the province has for long-term care.
"Hospital care BYOB:Buy your own bed," read one protester's sign.
"Put Duckett in the bucket," read another, referring to Alberta Health Services CEO Stephen Duckett, who has become the public face of bed closures, budget deficits and cuts while Health Minister Ron Liepert has remained in the background.
"I'm starting to get angry," said David Eggen, executive director of Friends of Medicare, whose organization used six yellow school buses to take people to the rally. Stelmach was not there and his office door remained closed.
Membership in Friends of Medicare has quadrupled over the last year to just under 5,000 people, Eggen said. "It's time to start fighting back."
He said the government's changes to the health system are coming fast and furious, each one significant, each one reducing the scope of what's covered under public health care. Yet the details are murky, Eggen said. A government-commissioned report was leaked earlier this week that suggested the government is targeting a "significant reduction" of long-term care beds, but neither Stelmach nor Duckett would say how many beds may close.
Michael Marlowe, a healthy 84-year-old, said if people don't speak out or join rallies like the one on Friday, the government will assume people are satisfied with what it's doing.
"I'm very concerned our seniors are being shafted," Marlowe said.
"I just want to let Mr. Stelmach know we are not sheep, we will protest," said Sharon MacLean, a personal care aide who has worked in long-term-care facilities, where, she said, "the prices keep going up and the care keeps going down." She said health-care workers try to make such places feel homelike for seniors. "There's a lot of burnout," MacLean said.
Margaret Heil, who is a clerical worker at the Edmonton General Hospital, said some wards with 72 seniors are left at night with only two workers.
"They want to give people on those units the best quality of life they can, but they're spread so thin," Heil said.
Two previous Friends of Medicare rallies were held in the spring outside the offices of Health Minister Ron Liepert and the minister's parliamentary assistant Raj Sherman. A third rally was held in Fort McMurray after MLA Guy Boutilier was kicked out of the Tory caucus for critiques that his government had failed to fulfil its promise to build a long-term-care facility in the northern city.
Another rally is scheduled in October outside the Red Deer office of Seniors Minister Mary Anne Jablonski.
jsinnema@thejournal.canwest.com