Alberta’s Wildrose Party leader, Brian Jean, wants to reform health care in a positive way. He has a very personal story that’s motivating him to do so. Watch the usual suspect on the Left destroy any changes he attempts to make.
Opening up about the recent death of his son with the Edmonton Sun editorial board on Tuesday, Jean said the three months he spent in hospital with his family changed the Wildrose approach to health care. While other parties have blasted the Wildrose plan for wait time guarantees as two-tiered health care, Jean says he’s merely aiming to “fix a broken system.”
“I had three specialists arguing in front of my son about what he had, all of which would kill him within two to 10 years,” said Jean, tearing up and taking a brief pause from the interview.
Speaking passionately, Jean recounted the weeks he spent with his 24-year-old son Michael as nurses wheeled-in broken equipment and doctors misdiagnosed him seven times, once causing liver problems when they gave him the wrong treatment. By the time they identified that Michael had an acute lymphoma, it was too late. He died in late March.
“I promised him I would fix it — and I will,” says Jean.
Go and do as much destruction to the PCs as possible!
Went today- and took care of my Democratic responsibility in the Advance Polls. Voted WR in Calgary. Results could be very interesting…
And Rachel Notley has said she would get rid of all private clinics (I am assuming that means things like family medical clinics where doctors get paid on a fee for service basis by Alberta Health Care.) So, let me get this straight, socialized medicine has been a horrific failure so the answer is more socialized medicine? So that means expansion of the nurses unions, expansion of CUPE, expansion of AUPE?
Oh yeah, that will work really well.
But,but,but. What happened to all the wonderful, “free” health care system we have here in Canuckistan, as brought to us by a commie(socialist)?
I thought everyone had gotten over “two-tier-aphobia”, especially after the CTV expose a few years back that showed we have a hell of a lot more than two tiers of medical treatment.
If anyone truly wants a reformed health care system, the last thing they want to do is elect the NDP,who will pis* away hundreds of millions on health care with little to nothing to show for it.
Health care is the biggest boondoggle in this socialist Country, no one had better try to seriously make changes at the Provincial level or they’ll be in front of the SCC,who will uphold the current system.
Best we can hope for is private MRI and X-ray clinics and possibly cosmetic surgery clinics.
Canada, North Korea, Cuba; the only three Countries in the developed world that don’t allow private medical care.
Why don’t you check with the NDP system in Manitoba. How good is that going?
And everything else there.
NDP just plain scare me after living with them for so many years.
My wife, who is a forced and reluctant AUPE member, has gotten mail reminders every day this week by her “union” to “Let the candidates know that you’ll cast your ballot for politicians who uphold the Alberta Way – by working hard, talking straight and keeping their promises.”
Maybe all Albertans should go to http://www.thealbertaway.com and read what they are all about…brought to you by the NDP!!!!!
Just sayin…
For those that can afford it we have always had a 2 tiered system. Unlike Cuba or N korea we have no restraints in utilizing world wide options.
http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/442/421
I realize I sound like a broken record because I am about to say the same thing yet again that I so often over the years have said here before however, it needs to be repeated over and over until someday people will just get it. The system needs to be privatized simply on morale principle. When I listen to and read arguments made by supporters of the current healthcare system against allowing doctors to freely set a market price for their own labour (work outside the system) it rings to me like, “If we open the barn doors, even just a little it, the slaves will get out!” We need the re-establishment of the private full coverage health insurance market and release the doctors from the legal requirement to work only within the public system. That is the only way it will ever be fixed (and for those who can and do, they won’t need to spend their money twice for the health care they are literally forced to receive elsewhere). Besides, not being allowed to wholly own and freely market your labour is simply disgusting.
Something that the ex BC Conservative leader Wilf Hanni explained in a discussion I had with him a few years back was that a simple fix to the health care issue (short of privatization)is to have hospitals bill the government for their services on an as supplied basis.
Hanni said that currently hospitals are given a budget at the beginning of the year and then must protect that budget. Every patient that comes in is a drain on the administrators budget, so in the event that the hospital has a high influx of patients at the beginning of the year, cuts must be made to protect the budget until the end.
If by the end of the year, there is still budget left, it needs to be spent (whether on care or on junkets)
Not sure if this is indeed true, but if so it would be far more efficient to have hospitals be paid for the services they provide as they provide them.
That would be a start.
I used to work in a building that had or was close to a lot of Alberta Health Services offices. It continually amazed me how often people were shifted around from one office to another or whole offices were moved to another building. To me, AHS seemed to be more an organization engaged in exercises in logistics rather than health care.
The whole thing needs to be blown up and started over. Talk to people that work in health care and ask them if they have ever heard of Gammon’s law. You will probably get a blank stare. But Gammon described the condition perfectly.
Gammon’s Law of bureaucratic displacement: In “a bureaucratic system … increase in expenditure will be matched by fall in production ….” Such systems will act rather like ‘black holes’ in the economic universe, simultaneously sucking in resources, and shrinking in terms of ’emitted’ production. You can read about it here:
http://www.adf.com.au/archive.php?doc_id=113
He based this law on what happened in Britain’s NHS. The stupid progressives think they can fix a bloated health care system by spending more money. They are complete idiots.
I do hope change comes but because the system has become too big to fail, many will resist allowing private healthcare.
Canada is politically locked into its monopoly socialist, mediocre and necessarily rationed leviathan health care system. No Party could be elected on a platform of actually reforming the system which is impossible as only by abandoning the model, could health care delivery and costs improve. The system is supported by both the happy-faced “business friendly” socialists of the so-called right and by the humourless, union-brand, dour-faced zombie-socialists of the left. It is the ultimate policy of the illiberal politics of envy, resentment and hatred. Nothing more is required to judge this system other than to ask what morally degenerate system requires a nation’s citizens to leave their country to seek timely, better or the only care available when spending their own money. Yes I know, Canada, Cuba and North Korea.
The only future for improved health care options is in off-shore “concierge” or “tourism” health care. As the boomers eventually bankrupt the current system, this will be the only option for those with the means. Mexico is positioning itself to capture a huge North American market for free market cost-effective health care delivery. Within the existing legal dystopia, Canadian Doctors should be able to open clinics near the US border and do the same thing as long as they not allow Canadians to use such facilities as that would be “illegal”.
In BC the NDP are again bleating that ‘privatization’ would bleed the public system when in fact like private schools, it would BENEFIT the public system. How so, you say?
I pay my Medical Service Plan benefits to the government, some $1500/yr. Say I’m in the long lineup for a knee replacement, along with 10 others. I’m fed up with waiting and getting bumped by more critical cases. So I opt to go to a (hypothetical) private clinic and pay $15K of after-tax savings to have it fixed.
Now there’s just 9 in the line and my $1500 is still available to fix their knee instead of mine. It’s a win-win for everybody.
But for the NDP it’s ‘unfair’ because I don’t suffer as long as those who can’t afford the $15K. The fact that the other 9 suffer longer themselves just doesn’t resonate with them. It’s social justice the NDP way.
We get the same BS from the B.C. Teacher’s Federation about ‘private schools’ draining public funding. We all still pay our full school taxes (the biggest part of anyone’s property tax bill), but private schools get just half the money per student that the state school student receives. So a better quality of education costs the taxpayer half as much. There’s still the same money going into educating children, but it slips through the greasy fingers of the teacher’s union. Oh, and it also gives students a foundation in moral upbringing and we just can’t have that.
Quebec has a two-tier public-private system
I have never had any confidence in bureaucrats delivering health care, because they don’t “deliver” anything except paper and waste.
Saving our healthcare system is all about doing what it takes to minimize costs and maximize efficiency.
The very two things our politicians and unions don’t have a f*cking clue about.
Canadians have a 3 tiered system; the third is for politicians like Newfoundland’s ex-premier Danny Williams.
Time will tell if Obamba-care will send Canadian political elites to other countries with Private Health Care, but me thinks there will still be “special” provisions for the Limousine Liberals of Canada.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Cardiology/AcuteCoronarySyndrome/18279
HEHEHE. I work in a hospitaal in Seattle.
I see many fine folks from Canada using that great healthcare. (-: