I am a disability-social work student at Mount Royal University. I am sending a copy of a letter I have written to Ron Liepert, minister of health and welfare, discouraging the privatization of public health care and the closure of more hospital beds in the province.
Please publish it in your newspaper.
Friends of Medicare have voiced their concerns about public health care in Alberta. I agree with the opinion that any form of privatization of the health care system would be detrimental for all Albertans, except perhaps the very rich. If other less fortunate provinces are able to provide public health care, is there any reason why Alberta, which is Canada’s richest province, cannot provide adequate health services? Presently, a rich person in the U.S. is able to undergo costly surgery with very little waiting time, while a poor person has a long period of waiting, or has to die. Let me assure you that Albertans as well as other Canadians do not want this kind of system.
Closing hospitals is not in the best interest of the public, nor is downsizing. People have long waiting periods now. Why worsen it? Seniors are on waitlists for years before being accepted into nursing homes. Closing hospital beds by placing long-term care patients in these homes will benefit nobody. Emergency patients are left on stretchers in corridors at the present time due to hospital closures.
Barbara Ann Bruce,
Calgary
Comments: 4
Melly Mel wrote:
I can honestly say that my experience over the past year and a half has been horrible!!
Given the choice of what we had to endure, I would take a model like the US anytime.
on Nov 17th, 2009 at 12:37pm Report Abuse
Drew Anderson wrote:
on Nov 18th, 2009 at 1:23pm Report Abuse
ibnyx wrote:
on Dec 3rd, 2009 at 9:18am Report Abuse
000000000000000000000 wrote:
Getting rid of professions is a long-overdue reform. You can't have 'market choice', when medieval-style guilds have a closed-shop lock on medicine. The doctor shortage is solely due to the associations lobbying to cap med. school enrolment, so they could have a sellers'-market. Liquidate the associations and turn licensing over to the government. 'Self-regulating' bodies are a stupid idea. Rationalise med. school (i.e., a 4-year programme), pump out as many doctors as possible, put doctors on salaries and let market forces (no unions) get doctors' wages under control.
Rationalise hospital management. Slash duplicated bureaucracies. The 'superboard' was an idea that should have been done long ago. Make EVERY bed 'private'--this actually saves costs. Cinderblock and mortar is a fraction of the cost of a hospital bed, yet the 'ward' system leads to unused beds (patients grouped due to gender, &c.).
Reevaluate the efficacy of some costly treatments, like chemo and radiation. If these costly, quality of life-reducing 'treatments' don't work, why are they funded? Gut the tax-breaks for PRIVATE, supplimentary insurance and raise payroll taxes, instead, for UNIVERSAL pharmacare coverage. (Everytime you shop at a store, &.c, you pay a 'tax' for some union healthplan--not a DIME goes to your healthcare.)
on Dec 3rd, 2009 at 1:37pm Report Abuse
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