EDMONTON — Today Premier Danielle Smith and Primary and Preventative Health Services Minister Adrianna LaGrange announced plans for new “reforms” to diagnostic testing, introducing American-style health care which will see Albertans paying out of pocket for private diagnostic screening and testing services, including MRIs, CT scans, full-body scans and blood work.
“To think that permitting Albertans with unaddressed health needs and money to spare, to access potentially unnecessary diagnostic tests, will somehow reduce our wait times is completely ludicrous,” says Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “Every time this government announces another new privatization scheme they claim it will save money and increase access to care. But Albertans have seen over and over that these schemes never actually pan out as promised, and instead reduce public capacity, worsen wait times for patients, and ultimately cost us more.”
The government’s attempted privatization of Alberta’s community medical laboratories resulted in weeks-long waits for basic diagnostic lab work, ultimately resulting in the service being returned to the public health system at a price tag of more than $97 million.
The existing privatization of diagnostic services like MRI and CT imaging has already put pressure on publicly delivered services, contributing to our current wait times. A 2022 Auditor General report made recommendations to improve diagnostic services by utilizing unused public capacity and organizing access more effectively, but those have been ultimately ignored by two successive UCP governments, which have instead opted to double down on privatization.
“Albertans are already suffering without access to the preventative and diagnostic health care they need, as a result of an ongoing staffing crisis throughout our health care system” says Gallaway. “This government has been repeatedly called on to improve health care access by fixing short-staffing, by making family doctors available to the hundreds of thousands of Albertans who don’t have one, by getting the pressure off of our exhausted hospitals. Instead all they have to offer is more and more privatization, and more and more out-of-pocket health care costs for families who are already struggling with affordability in Alberta.”
As per the most recent Canada Health Act Annual Report, Alberta missed out on more than $13 million dollars in federal health transfers under the Diagnostic Services Policy as a result of patient charges for medically necessary diagnostic services in 2023 and 2024.
“We know that Alberta is already failing to ensure that patients aren’t being illegally billed for diagnostic services. And at the same time, this government has continuously made moves to charge Albertans more for the health care they need,” said Gallaway. “Even while government officials are being publicly accused of very serious allegations of corruption and interference in private health care contracts, they’re plowing ahead with further schemes to funnel more of our valuable public health care dollars into private profits.”
“Albertans deserve better than empty promises and legislated queue jumping. We deserve a government that is serious about making sure that every Albertan has timely access to the quality care they need, regardless of whether they’re able to pay up front,” concluded Gallaway.
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