Healthcare is the greatest budgetary expense. Recent events have shown how vulnerable the system is to demand fluctuations on it.
Not only have physicians been upset that there is no more money in the public purse, the government is fiscally unable to spend more toward their billing fees. Patients are limited to treatment options as doctors threaten to leave.
Physicians should be allowed to accept/ take on more responsibility of supplying care to patients on a private fee for service that each feels will allow their practices to remain solvent and grow in scope (hybrid system).
Patients will have a choice to choose public or private service. If Healthcare insurance is available and legal, patients can divert themselves from public waitlist to the benefit of all patients.
People using Private Tier System (allowing Private Hospital facilities similar to the Non-Hospital Surgical Facilities already existing) would effectively pay a user tax (fee for service) shifting some burden from the public tax revenue to private payments. This would also help to keep Medical Tourism dollars in Alberta.
This could help the economy recover more efficiently by creating choices, for both physicians and patients, in time and public costs to the Public Health System. The economic benefit to government and the society is a health budget that will not grow excessively for Public Provincial Healthcare that in itself delays accessibility.
UCP Popularity Sinks To A New Low
If you listen to some recent polls, (video by Ken Chapman of ReBoot Alberta) it’s easy to see there is a lot of citizens who aren’t happy with new policies that weren’t in the UCP election campaign. The text above is policy 11 of the 2020 UCP AGM Policy And Governance Resolutions. You can read all the new policies below:
Patients are limited to treatment options as doctors threaten to leave. That much is true, but it’s the UCP government driving them out of the province from all the government cutbacks and demands.
Kim Siever said the AMA announced that 400 clinics in Alberta are laying off support staff or considering closing. He’s keeping a list of the closures. Alberta Minister of Health Tyler Shandro said he would just recruit some more, but the terms being offered to healthcare professionals isn’t favourable.
A lot of people are fleeing the province. Others, who received CERB payments from the federal government don’t want to go back to their jobs that only pays half as much, with a constant threat of catching the coronavirus.
It seems Alberta will have to learn that if you treat people poorly, they won’t want to stick around and work for you.
I’ve heard Mr. Siever keeps this list updated, so you might want to bookmark it.
In the months since my retirement from medical practice in Crowsnest Pass, I have conducted a detailed review of the likely impacts of the proposed Grassy Mountain Coal Project. What I have learned is disturbing, to say the least.
The mine, if permitted, will degrade both the water quality and the water quantity in the Crowsnest River and in the upstream tributaries that flow through the proposed project. The proposed impoundments (tailings ponds) are a huge concern, underscored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s report that all impoundments leak. Many fail. When they do fail, they spill huge amounts of waste into the downstream waterways. In the best case, a soup of toxic chemicals will be delivered to Albertans. In the worst case, the debris flow will engulf a hospital, shops and homes before the toxic soup impacts other Albertans.
Waste rock from mining releases selenium for decades. Despite assurances from the mine developers, no has ever successfully remediated that leachate. Teck has spent literally billions of dollars over many years trying to handle its selenium problem. Selenium has destroyed fisheries in many locations in the U.S., and is the likely culprit in the recently documented collapse of the trout fishery in the Elk River near Fernie and Sparwood.
People who live near coal mines face serious health risks. Negative health impacts start at conception and continue until death. The toxic effects can only be seen at the population level, but they are dramatic and sometimes fatal for people living many kilometres from a mine. Inhaling coal mine dust, a single example, is a known health hazard.
This Labour Day, as our province continues to struggle with both a pandemic and a recession, Alberta working families are waking up to the fact that they’ve been the victims of a cruel bait and switch.
During the last election, a majority of Albertans voted for Jason Kenney’s promise of “Job, Economy, Pipelines!”
But, instead,they’re chasing doctors out of our province. During a pandemic!
And, they’re sending more than 750,000 of our kids and 90,000 staff back to school without adequate protection or funding to reduce class sizes.
During the long summer session of the legislature, they also passed anti-worker labour legislation that ends overtime pay as we know it and tips the playing field in favour of employers, both in the workplace and on the political stage.
It also became clear that backroom deals are being cut with UCP insiders to privatize and corporatize our health-care system.
LaGrange should disclose the epidemiological models used to anticipate consequences of both the current reopening plan and several alternatives, so they can be accurately compared.
The public has the right to hear how Alberta’s plan incorporates up-to-date data, verified by districts, about realities in schools. These include factors like class and room sizes; data on which mitigation measures such as smaller class size, better ventilation or medical-grade PPE for teachers could help stem viral spread and their costs. Where good data about the consequences of reopening don’t yet exist, there should be transparency, too.
We should also know what experts have been consulted, what concerns, ideas and recommendations they generated and how these were addressed and evaluated.
Transparency about data and expert recommendations are vital to an informed public. Transparency allows discussion and critique, and allows concrete conversation about risks the public is being asked to accept.
What is the prospect that children, family members or teachers will be hospitalized or die? What are best- and worst-case scenarios in terms of resultant casualties and community spread? The public should know what risks or potential costs everyone is being asked to bear.
Premier Jason Kenney has released few details about back-to-school plans, while emphasizing parent choice. In this photo, Jillian Reid, 9, works at home in Cremona, Alta., in March 2020, after schools closed. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Transparency also allows parents to make informed choices and to develop a sense of confidence in how decisions are made not only now, but going forward.
Israel, for example, failed to reduce class size and saw an outbreak at a high school when schools reopened that infected hundreds. There were instructions for mask-wearing by students in Grade 4 and older, open windows, frequent hand washing and physically distancing students when possible. But with up to 38 children in classrooms, physical distancing was impossible, and under a heat wave, officials permitted windows closed for air conditioning and allowed a mask-wearing exemption. Are similar outcomes or decisions possible in Alberta?
Transparency also matters as it allows people to evaluate whether plans address and fund ethical requirements pertaining to school staff: adequate provisions so reopenings work logistically, adequate protection that ensures reopenings are maximally safe and adequate compensation for staff who are assuming risks.
Unanswered questions
We need answers to questions such as: How much does teachers’ risk increase in classrooms where social distancing cannot be maintained? Given risks, is hazard pay in order for school staff? If it isn’t — hopefully because projected risks are low — then how about a provincial payout for those who may nonetheless suffer serious illness or death in conjunction with a COVID-19 school outbreak?
That seems only fair and could contribute to confidence in what to expect.
In the end, transparency allows us to hold leadership accountable. Politicians and scientists can be wrong. If the public knows what the province’s projections are and accepts them, then it can be prepared for predicted bumps without losing trust in leadership. If the models turn out to be inaccurate or ethically unacceptable, the public deserves a change in course.
If requests for transparency go unanswered, Albertans must assume either that the scientific expertise behind decisions to open schools is inadequate, or that the education minister is failing to base her decisions on scientific expertise. Neither option is acceptable with so many lives at stake.
The integral problem with policing in Canada lies in the fact that we expect too much of front-line police officers and train them for roles that are in gross dissimilarity to the ones they actually play in society.
What’s needed is a thorough reform of the policing system itself.
The evidence of this mismatch is clear. Take, for example, the case in Toronto of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old woman who recently fell to her death from the balcony of her 24th-floor apartment minutes after police arrived in response to a call from her family who wanted them to take her to a mental health facility.
And the case in Montréal where police shot Nicholas Gibbs, who had a history of mental health issues, alleging that they had approached to break up a fight between him and another man.
And the police–related deaths of Machuar Madut, Jaskamal Singh, and Andrew Loku, each of whom had a history of mental illness.
These situations, like so many others, could have been delegated to non-police agencies, such as the Canadian Mental Health Association or a group like Toronto’s mobile health team, which are trained to calm things down and de-escalate.
Healthcare is the greatest budgetary expense. Recent events have shown how vulnerable the system is to demand fluctuations on it.
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Kim Siever said the AMA announced that 400 clinics in Alberta are laying off support staff or considering closing. He’s keeping a list of the closures. Alberta Minister of Health Tyler Shandro said he would just recruit some more, but the terms being offered to healthcare professionals isn’t favourable. 
