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Regional - Tories don’t get it
Commentary by Christine Burdett
for Smoky River Express
For almost a decade, as the former chair of Friends of Medicare, I told politicians and Canadians that Albertans are not stupid. They understand the need for publicly funded administered and provided health care; they know that public care saves us money, while providing care for everyone.
My faith, however, has been sorely tried of late. It seems we keep electing the only stupid people in the province to represent us. Alberta’s Conservative MLAs are the only ones who don’t get it.
During all his years of cutting and trying to privatize health care, Ralph Klein was never able to come up with any evidence to support his position that private providers could do things better and more cheaply. The Fraser Institute had to fall back on the notion that private health care would be better because doctors would have a better bedside manner.
While Alberta’s governing Tories refused to accept it, there is a huge weight of evidence showing that health care is better and less expensive in countries with public healthcare systems. Even the countries that have been touted as having better health care because of their hybrid systems predominantly have more, not less, publicly covered care than we do.
We have a number of challenges in Canada that make our health care more expensive and harder to deliver. We are a huge country with many isolated communities. In Europe, the population is predominantly gathered in small areas, thus providing economies of scale and cutting transportation costs.
We are next door to the most expensive health-care system in the world. In the U.S., they do not have the best health-care system in the world; in fact, it is one of the worst. But they do have pockets of excellent care for those who can afford it. Yes, we should strive to make every health facility a “Mayo Clinic”, but we also need to recognize that it does cost more and not everyone in the U.S. has access to the Mayo Clinic. Many have no access to health care at all.
Albertans know that slash and burn cuts, followed by huge spending in the hopes of regenerating the parched earth of health care, did not work before and it will not work now.
When Rosa Parks, at the age of 42, decided she had had enough and refused to give up her seat on a bus, she did not plan to start a civil rights push that would change her country; she only wanted what is right. It’s time for every Albertan who knows what is right to take their stand for public health care.
Talk to your MLA. Tell them you will not stand for another round of attacks on our health-care system and that you will remember this at the next election.
Keep medicare public.
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