| Premier Ralph Klein is vowing to usher in a new era of health care, which he’s dubbing the "third way."
Klein, who unveiled his vision on January 11, says the third way will be somewhere in between Canada’s current model of health care and the American two-tiered system, and Alberta will study "best approaches" around the world, like those in England, Switzerland, France, Australia and New Zealand.
Opposition parties, health care unions and Friends of Medicare say the third way is simply code for increasing private health care delivery, and that the premier hasn’t come up with any plan to reduce waiting lists or increase capacity within the public system.
However, Klein is promising his third way "starts with a fundamental commitment that a person’s ability to pay will never determine their ability to access health care in Alberta."
He says it will "unshackle" health regions and give them the freedom to pursue new strategies. He praised the Calgary Health Region (CHR) for contracting out 750 knee and hip surgeries to Networc Health, a private company located at the formerly public Grace Hospital. The CHR, which has stated it entered into the contract because there aren’t enough operating rooms or public hospital beds in Calgary to do the surgeries in a timely fashion, has admitted the operations will cost 10 per cent more than in the public system.
But Klein singled out the contract as a "health care success story" and says Alberta "requires more compromises like that."
Liberal leader Kevin Taft calls Klein’s comments "worrisome."
"The so called third way is just a way of glossing over health care privatization," he says. |
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