In Gary Mar’s Aug. 18 clarification regarding private health clinics in Alberta, he used the term “Albertans are leaving the province for less-urgent procedures.” Albertans may indeed be leaving the province, but the key words here are “… for less-urgent procedures.” If a procedure is less urgent, meaning not critical, it only makes sense to handle the critical procedures first.
There are a number of issues raised by Mar’s recent pronouncements.
Two of these are patience and selfishness. If the procedure you want is not urgent, don’t complain about those with critical needs being treated first. In Alberta, if your need is critical, as determined by medical professionals, wait times are extremely short or non-existent.
Another issue is the fact that health resources are a “zero sum game” in the short and intermediate term. Every health professional working in a private setting means there is one less in the public system. It takes many years to train these people. Since funding for medical and nursing schools is not being expanded, how can we train even more doctors and nurses? It takes months or years to recruit professionals from other parts of the world. Every physician we recruit from a country like South Africa means one less physician in South Africa, which has spent a great deal on their training. Our shortage of physicians and nurses may be partially alleviated by foreign recruitment, but we are damaging the health-care system in the source countries.
An additional issue is that private health clinics around the world are noted for cherry picking the relatively “healthy wealthy” and leaving the difficult cases to the public system. This causes the cost of the publicly-funded system to increase on a per case basis while the owners of private clinics become wealthy themselves.
A final issue is the myth of the lack of sustainability in health-care funding in Alberta. Real data, produced by the Parkland Institute, clearly demonstrate the cost of health provision in Alberta is indeed sustainable, even after the ideologically based cuts to revenue instituted by the government.
There are some simple things the government can do to make Alberta a leader in health-care provision.
• It can reintroduce the health-care premiums that very few Albertans were complaining about prior to the premiums being dropped. The major beneficiaries of the cut in premiums were the shareholders and owners of companies that were offering health coverage for their employees. Payroll taxes were reduced. Low-income Albertans did not benefit from the cut at all as they were already covered for nothing.
• The government can also eliminate the 10 per cent flat tax, which was also introduced for ideological, rather than fiscal reasons, and really only benefits the wealthiest Albertans. Reintroducing the progressive tax system would raise billions of dollars, some of which could be used to eliminate the damage caused to health care and education, and still leave Alberta as the lowest taxed jurisdiction in the country. There are three ways to balance a budget; cut expenditures, raise revenues or some combination of these two. Our government refuses, for ideological reasons, to look at anything but cutting expenditures and this is causing major damage to both health-care provision and education.
•, a placement program for graduates of Alberta medical and nursing schools could be introduced. Placing new physicians and nurses in smaller communities for a period of years would ensure better medical coverage and partially repay the huge cost of their publicly-funded education.
Michael O’Hanlon
Director, Central Alberta Council on Aging
Red Deer