April 2000

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Letters to the Editors

Alberta Public Healthcare 2000

Pam Parry

Happy New Year 2000! There have been times in the last few years when I have questioned whether we would make it to the new millennium, but we did! I found one of the most stressful issues to deal with has been and continues to be the establishment of for-profit hospitals and two-tiered Medicare. Why Klein continues to press for this legislation when is own party members have said they don't want it (at their own Health Summit), makes me very curious. We know for a fact that his office has received tens of thousands of phone calls, faxes, e-mails and letters speaking against this legislation.

The federal Health Minister Allen Rock has asked Klein to postpone it; even Tory ex-premier Don Getty has spoken against it.

Klein says he has to open it up for for-profits because of the waiting lists (caused by the loss of three hospitals in Calgary). But, The Consumers' Association of Canada did a study which found that waiting times for cataract surgeries are longer in Calgary than they are in Edmonton; the surgeries are all performed in private clinics in Calgary and mostly in public hospitals in Edmonton. The Auditor General's report this year indicated that all across the province, the physical capacity for acute care hospitals is much larger than what is currently being used. Why can't we use this existing hospital space?

It has been pointed out that for-profit hospitals or clinics will have to build new facilities in many cases, pay property and corporate taxes and, somehow, squeeze a profit out of their operation. In order to get this profit, regional health authorities will have to pay huge "facility fees" to private, for-profit hospitals/clinics, in the same way that private day surgery clinics are paid facility fees now. A private surgical clinic collected $1801 to repair a main knee ligament from WCB, while it would cost only $400 to have the same procedure done in a public hospital. Alberta Health vetoed public facilities from charging the extra fees to the WCB, but a spokesperson from Alberta Health admitted that the need for private clinics to earn a profit is part of the justification for higher fees.

Private, for-profit health care - including hospitals - are not the answer to our needs. The only ones who benefit are the investors. Investors want a return on their money and, when profit is the main motive, patient care deteriorates. Which has been proven over and over again in the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand; private health care either alone or in "partnership" with the public system as a "blended" or "parallel" system, has failed. Waiting lists grew longer and a chronically underfunded and tattered public system is unable to provide even adequate health care.

Klein says he will introduce a new bill sometime in the New Year that will give regional health authorities the power to hire private, for-profit health care companies to provide core medical services. He has refused the suggestion of holding a public plebiscite.

If you want to keep public medicare, the only way to make your voice heard is to phone, fax, e-mail, write and tell them you do not want private for-profit hospitals/clinics. Do it for yourself; do it for all Albertans.

Hon. Ralph Klein, Premier
307 Legislature Building
Edmonton AB T5K 2B6
Phone: 310-0000-427-2251 (free)
Fax: 1-780-427-1349

Hon. Halvar Jonson, Minister of Health
228 Legislature Building
Edmonton AB T5K 2B6
Phone: 310-0000-427-3665 (free)
Fax: 1-780-415-0961

Alberta Connects Comment Line: 310-4455 (free) and your MLA.