Alberta Premier Ralph Klein likes to call his contribution to politics the “Alberta Advantage”.
Unfortunately, if he gets his way with Alberta’s health care system, only the financially advantaged will partake in his version of the Alberta Advantage. The rest will be truly disadvantaged.
The Alberta government's latest proposal to allow people to buy private insurance for medically necessary services and let doctors “double-dip” between public and private payment flies in the face of the best evidence available around the world while breaching cherished Canadian values.
Public services and privatization
Proponents of turning more of Canada’s public Medicare system over to private care providers could only justify such privatization if they could convince Canadians that doing so would improve the quality, accessibility, and affordability of health care in Canada. The onus should be on those who want to privatize delivery and payment to show how investor-owned services and private payment would improve or even maintain the demonstrable advantages the public system has to offer.
Inside this special edition on labour and employment:
The Erosion of Employment Standards
Who's Up, Who's Down: Labour and Capital in BC
Paying our Public Servants: The New Bargaining Mandate
Children in the World of Work
Waits for care are the biggest political issue facing Canadian health care—a priority reflected in the accord reached by the federal and provincial health ministers a few days ago. They agreed to set limits on wait times for major surgeries and treatments, but conceded that these limits would be targets rather than guarantees. This is welcome news for Canadians already on long wait lists. But, despite years of debate on the issue there is still little discussion of making more efficient use of existing resources and facilities.
OTTAWA—A study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows that there are public sector solutions to Canada’s wait list problems. While often touted, private for-profit clinics actually tend to make things worse.
Author Dr. Michael Rachlis asserts that, instead of going down this road, Canadians should choose public sector solutions. The paper highlights two innovative approaches:
1. establish more specialized public short-stay surgical centres; and2. adopt modern methods of queue management from other sectors.
The season of public sector bargaining is upon us. While the teachers’ strike is over, bargaining now starts in earnest for the vast majority of public sector workers, leaving British Columbians to wonder if there are more labour disruptions to come. The answer will, of course, depend on the negotiating positions of both public sector unions and the provincial government, and the ability of both parties to reach agreement on what are fair and practical pay increases.
Most of the media coverage of the devastation inflicted by Hurricane Katrina focused on the desperate plight of the survivors and the chaos and violence that wracked the flood-stricken city of New Orleans. The victims--most of them poor African-Americans--were justifiably enraged by the tardy and sparse relief efforts of the Bush administration. Their shocked disbelief that an American city could so quickly fall into such a state of anarchy was shared by U.S. media pundits and commentators.