EDMONTON — During Question Period in the Alberta Legislature on Tuesday, Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services Matt Jones made the following statement in response to a question:
We’re looking at developing a voucher program where patients who have waited longer than clinically recommended can go to any approved or accredited provider in Alberta and get that surgery.
“Once again, this government is shaping health policy based on offhand comments from the Premier or her many Health Ministers, rather than on any real evidence or data,” said Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “And then attacking and dismissing any critics rather than be accountable for the significant concerns with their policies. We have urgent issues in Alberta’s health care system that are impacting Albertans every day, yet all this government can offer is more ways to funnel public health care dollars into private profits.”
Last April, the UCP government announced they would be implementing an Activity-Based Funding (ABF) model for acute care services in Alberta. At the time, Friends of Medicare criticised the plan as a voucher model, an ideological strategy focused on promoting competition rather than ensuring well-funded facilities to provide quality and availability of care. The Minister of Health’s office denied it then, but just one year later, Minister Jones has confirmed that a voucher system is in fact being considered.
“We have public solutions to our surgical wait times that are being ignored. We could improve access by centralizing our wait lists or by expanding underutilized public capacity—we don’t need a convoluted voucher scheme to do that,” said Gallaway. “Instead, we have operating rooms sitting empty and unused every single day, because this government would rather double-down on its failed privatization strategy than ensure that our public hospitals are funded and staffed properly. At every turn this government seems determined to further entrench a for-profit health care market, irrespective of the cost or suffering it will have on Albertans waiting for surgeries.”
The Minister’s statement comes at a moment when a staggering 39 percent of patients are waiting longer than is clinically recommended for life-saving surgeries, as per government data. Despite promising impending ‘guardrails’ to their two-tier health care legislation to ensure surgeons remain in the public system, vouchers would only further facilitate the siphoning of our limited health care professionals into the private system, further compromising public capacity.
“Over and over this government is taking steps to establish two-tier American style health care in Alberta, despite absolutely no mandate from Albertans after running last election on a ‘public health care guarantee,’” said Gallaway. “They’ve repeatedly broken their promises to Albertans, they’re engrossed in ongoing allegations of serious corruption in surgical procurement, and yet they still expect us to accept massive changes to our health care system based on trust alone.”
Friends of Medicare continues to call on Albertans to speak out against two-tier American style health care in Alberta.
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