Up late watching the Health Statutes Amendment Act debate. Some thoughts...
Ridiculous that the government is acting like disclosing compensation is about transparency. If they cared about transparency, they would have done compensation disclosure long before they were losing in the court of public opinion and were scrambling to regain the upper hand.
Hypocritical for the government to be complaining about how much drs make when their own salaries and those of their issues managers are so bloated compared to other provinces.
NDP makes the point that private health care does not equate to shorter wait times in the public system. Evidence from various jurisdictions shows this to be true and gov has shown no data to the contrary.
The gov should not be aggressively pushing through significant legislative changes without showing Albertans evidence about how their changes will benefit the public. Even the gov's supporters should be demanding to see the evidence (hint: there isn't any).
Corporate ownership (of the kind proposed here) is deeply concerning. Once corporations are entrenched in Alberta's health care system, hard to believe that they won't push for further private delivery or even private finance (Fair Deal report shows receptiveness to the latter).
Corporate owners also likely to push upselling patients to enhanced services to generate revenue and to deliver lower quality of care to maximize profits.
NDP raising concerns with lack of transparency between gov and corporations in other sectors of the economy. I am concerned that there will be a total lack of transparency in the gov's contracting with chartered surgical facilities.
NDP rightly concerned that even though services will be publicly funded, Albertans' health will be treated as a source of corporate profits.
NDP emphasizing that doctors should not be adversaries. They should be partners in health system decision-making.
UCP still going on about transparency even though all signs point towards them not actually caring about transparency in health or other sectors. Where is the info on how you plan to roll out private facilities? Why didn't you care about disclosing dr compensation until now?
Red Deer UCP member just mentioned that no one is likely watching. That points to a lack of transparency itself. Important issues like this should be debated at a time when the public is likely to listen and comment.
@JanisIrwin People are watching. And they appreciate your opposition to the UCP's corporatization and privatization of health care.
NDP is bang on.... we should be strengthening and expanding the public health care system and not moving towards profit-centred care.
Some interesting reading... "Our meta-analysis suggests that private for-profit ownership of hospitals, in comparison with private not-for-profit ownership, results in a higher risk of death for patients": cmaj.ca/content/166/11…
And another paper: "Private for-profit hospitals result in higher payments for care than private not-for-profit hospitals. Evidence strongly supports a policy of not-for-profit health care delivery at the hospital level": pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15184339/
Another: "In the comparison of PFP [private for profit] and PNFP [private not for profit] providers, significant differences in terms of mortality of patients and payments to facilities have been found, both being higher in PFP facilities" pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25437212/
"The median wait for surgery in the public sector was different depending on the surgeon’s
practice: patients could expect to wait up to 13 weeks longer for surgery in the public sector if
their surgeon also had a private practice": mchp-appserv.cpe.umanitoba.ca/reference/surg…
practice: patients could expect to wait up to 13 weeks longer for surgery in the public sector if
their surgeon also had a private practice": mchp-appserv.cpe.umanitoba.ca/reference/surg…
Back to the debate... concern that these changes will disproportionately groups like rural patients, those with complex conditions, etc. Do we want a system where the healthiest people with the least complex medical needs get treated first in cream skimming private facilities?
"Evidence indicates that privately funded health services and long public wait times go hand in hand, and that growth in private payment will do nothing to alleviate it": policynote.ca/the-evidence-o…
NDP very rightly worried about what will happen in the regulations. Very concerning that the Minister will be able to pass regulations governing the disclosure of physician compensation and, even more so, private health care more generally behind closed doors.
NDP concerned about lack of transparency in other government contracts. I think that we will only see even more of that lack of transparency when it comes to contracting with chartered surgical facilities.
Disingenuous for UCP to pretend NDP doesn't care about transparency. Perhaps they (reasonably) disagree with this clearly being raised for reasons other than transparency, midnight amendments/debates, or the fact that this info likely to be given in a format that is misleading.
Seriously? UCP is criticizing NDP for "divisive rhetoric".
If the UCP is so concerned about high earning drs, why have their cuts primarily disadvantaged family/rural drs?
Premier suggesting that people are attacking Minister of Health for suggesting budget cuts. That's false. They are attacking him for spreading misinformation, heavy-handed treatment of drs, etc.
NDP points out that gov not acting in good faith. This is correct. They have eroded important institutions (AMA, colleges, Health Quality Council), treated doctors in a heavy-handed manner, and are now aggressively pushing through significant changes to the health system at 3am.
NDP points out that you can't cherry pick what to be transparent about and what to be secretive about. For example, Albertans deserve information about the war room.
Concerns about gov suppressing democratic speech. Middle of the night debates, issues managers attacking private citizens to discourage criticism and, as NDP suggests, calling/disclosing info about drs who have spoken out.
NDP says that the gov should be focused on paying attention to what Albertans want and not playing games. This is the latter. This could have been addressed much sooner and the vague nature of the legislative provision may yield misleading information.
Minister of Health arguing pointless semantics. Termination of agreement rather than ripping up contract. Powerpoint presentation rather than compensation proposal from AMA. What is the point of this?
Again with the false narratives about the AMA not coming to the table with proposals.
Minister claiming that NDP doesn't understand the amendment. First, they seem to understand it very well to me. But second, if you wanted them to understand it better, maybe you shouldn't have sprung this on them at 12:30am.
NDP highlighting concerns with lack of trust and loss of confidence in Minister of Health.
NDP correctly talking about how short the negotiation period with the AMA was. Other provinces have negotiated with their drs for much, much longer and have managed to come to an agreement.
NDP correctly states that this isn't merely a minor expansion of private surgical activities. The gov wants to have 30% of surgeries performed in private clinics (with their associated concerns with access, cost, and quality) and to allow those clinics to be run by corporations.
Finite number of health care professional hours. Private clinics will reallocate hours to healthier patients with less complex medical needs. Better to keep all patients in the same system where they can be seen according to need.
This behaviour is total nonsense. The NDP raise legitimate substantive concerns with the legislation and the UCP stands up to mock them for "getting fired" and slings insults. Nice decorum.
Ridiculous to claim that the NDP is the "least cooperative opposition" during a pandemic. Other provincial govs not waging war with drs and fundamentally restructuring the health care system during the pandemic.
If skimming off the easy cases is so efficient, then there's no reason that the public system can't experiment with those delivery models. Having for-profit companies do those cases will just drive up costs because of the need to build in a profit margin for investors.
NDP highlighting concerns with eroding the independence of the Health Quality Council. HQCA supposed to provide non-biased recommendations and not to act as an arm of government. UCP's amendments erode that independence.
