| The Alberta Legislature is back in session – a welcome departure from the usual government-by-fiat – and this session promises to be a doozy. Our esteemed premier is once again bent on dismantling medicare, but this time he will likely face even more opposition than he did in 2000, when he rammed through legislation permitting for-profit hospitals.
Why dismantling medicare is so important to Ralph Klein is still a mystery. Has he made promises behind closed doors that he has to keep? Has he been bamboozled by slick medi-entrepreneurs? Who knows? But this is his third direct attempt (perhaps that’s why it’s called the Third Way) to open up our public health care system to those who see it as only a business opportunity gone to waste.
Of course, Klein and his well-paid minions in the government’s spin department will try and convince Albertans that this is about "sustainability." You know – the old argument that government will go broke if it continues to fund public health care because there are too many old people to look after and they all want those expensive drugs and medical technology at their disposal.
But it’s pretty rich when a premier who forgoes serious attempts to save any of the billions in the government treasury, in favour of flinging it about willy-nilly like a drunken sailor, says we can’t afford public health care. If you and I said we would rather spend money on cigarettes than help pay for medical care for our families, we would be regarded as selfish.
But then, this isn’t about sustainability, especially in Alberta – it’s about creating business opportunities. There are plenty of willing investors – insurance companies, big pharma, the manufacturers of everything from MRIs to plastic hips – who want to cash in on people’s health care needs.
A publicly financed monopoly such as our health care system gets in the way of all that because it is so much better at controlling prices. It creates a buyer’s market and we as taxpayers, and patients, benefit from that. Klein wants to loosen things up so the sellers have more control, and we as taxpayers, and patients, have less. Not only that, his plans to deregulate health care (at least the plans we can make sense of) will rob the public system of medical personnel and create even longer waiting lists.
And despite what the spin masters say, it’s not about choice, either. Unless you are talking about the prerogative of the rich to get what they want when they want it and the heck with everyone else.
If you want a template for what health care in this province could look like if the Third Way comes to pass, take a look at long-term care in Alberta. It’s been so deregulated that patients pay for almost everything – the room, meals, baths and bandages. The government subsidizes both for-profit and not-for-profit facilities, but even the auditor general can’t figure out what the money is being used for. Fees for patients keep going up and the money from government just seems to disappear into a black hole. And, of course, we’ve all heard the horror stories about patients suffering and/or dying in some facilities because of abysmal staffing situations.
The thing is, most Albertans don’t want what Klein wants for them when it comes to health care – any decent poll proves that. And yet he persists. This time around, however, more people are wise to him and he will have an even more difficult time than he did with Bill 37 and Bill 11. He faces a much more united opposition that will come at him from the left, the centre and the right. Paul Hinman, the Alberta Alliance MLA for Cardston-Taber-Warner, bedrock Conservative country, said recently that while the government has the most seats in the Legislature, they do not have a "genuine mandate to alter the fabric of the province."
Last time around, Klein also faced stiff opposition from outside the Legislature, much of it organized by Friends of medicare. This time around, FOM is even better organized. It’s become a provincewide, inclusive, grassroots organization that reaches far beyond its union/NDP roots. There is also a hardworking, knowledgeable group of elder-care advocates who have managed to make long-term care a hot political issue in this province. This week they launched a website called Citizen Watch (www.continuingcarewatch.com) with which they plan to hold the government accountable for its policies and regulations.
Last time around, author and public health care advocate Kevin Taft provoked Klein’s ire with his critique of the government’s plans for privatization (disclosure: in 2000 I co-authored, with Taft, a book about health care). Now Taft is leader of the Liberals, so he can take on Klein from a seat inside the Legislature, right across the floor from Klein, with help from Harry Chase, another Liberal MLA and former head of FOM in Alberta. Public health care has been an NDP issue since day one and the NDP caucus, while small, is bigger than it was in 2000 and feisty as ever.
This time around, Klein knows that in the last election, as many people voted against his Tories as voted for them. Calgary now has three Liberal MLAs, who are free to speak up for public health care while all those backbench Tory MLAs from Calgary will have to publicly support Klein’s plans to wreck medicare or remain mute.
There is one thing that is the same: Iris Evans, the minister of health, seems as bullied and confused by her boss as her predecessor, Halvar Jonson, was in 2000.
Overall, the political dynamic in Alberta has changed a lot in six years. Klein would have been wise to pack it up after the province’s centennial, but still he persists in his crusade. This time, however, he just might get toppled from his white horse and then sent packing by his own party. |
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