you just don't seem to get it....do ya. Posting op-eds is not the same as factual back up of your contentions. Continually going on about what Oregon is doing does not translate into Alberta doing the same thing. Especially since, by your own admission, the op-ed you posted was from over 10 years ago and Alberta still is not running an "american" form of health care.
Gerry! In that Jounal article the Minister of Health is telling Albertans he is going to look into the Oregon system as a working plan for Alberta. What part of that do you not get?
Alberta has a social assistance level already in effect. To get social assistance you must have liquidated your home and dispersed most of your cash. This is the same model being practiced in the US broadly. As I said above, the Capital Health Region had already produced the list of what not to cover when this article was put up.
They have already reduced coverage for seniors' meds, eyeglass prescriptions and so on. Still they say Seniors are ripping off the system which is a blatant lie.
Any money that changes accounts here comes out of consumer pockets into the balance sheets of the petroleum industry by way of still lower royalty. We are to the point of paying the oil companies to take the resource from Alberta. It is time this Government and the WRP were turfed out along with Harper and his cronies. I guess that is where my heart is at!
Ralph Klein in the same period put forward his nefarious 3rd Way idea which, was a quick move to the Oregon type system.
All this in the face of 50% higher charges to Canadians going to private health care system!
Terri Jackson, a professor in the University of Alberta’s faculty of medicine and dentistry who has a doctoral degree in health policy points out that Conservatives the world over lie through their teeth about all aspects of Health care in order privatize it all!
The average Albertan like myself has paid health care premiums for over 45 years and most of us have never used it, We still pay 30% out of pocket for services not covered by health care, while the younger generation that are statistically bigger users of hospitals are paying nothing toward their possible future health care.
I would cheerfully pay premiums like we did knowing that it is the younger generation that are big users of expensive treatments.
For example, every Albertan admitted to an institution is accurately documented. That is fact.
-Alberta is chronologically the youngest province in Canada. Of all Albertans admitted to hospital, 76.4% were under the age of 65.
-Babies under a year were the most common.
-The average age of hospitalized patients was 39.5 years with half of those being under the age of 36 years. These are not baby boomers.
-Only 10.7% are 65 years or older.
-Some 16.4% of the elderly admitted to hospital died as compared to 3.3% of other patients.
-Over half of the patients admitted to Intensive Care were younger patients who had more done to them and stayed in ICU longer, the most expensive hospital service.
