First things first. I am not a fan of the UCP government in Alberta. When the UCP government now allows doctors to charge for some services, giving people a chance to jump the line, I was actually horrified. Wait times are already crazy in this province, and now it is going to get worse....unless you pay. How fair is that? Of course, I jumped to the usual conclusions about how the UCP just wants to make everything private....because they have a habit of wrecking everything.
Then I started looking at health care across the country. It seems that health care in this country is in a big crisis. 15 hour wait times at the ER are now the norm. People cannot get doctors. It seems to get worse the further east you go.....in fact, Alberta is not doing bad compared to other provinces, and that tells you how bad it is in other provinces. In Manitoba it is not unusual to have to travel 3-5 hours for an MRI if you want to get the earliest option. And they will not cover the costs to get there and back. This happened to someone I know. It was the quickest option. Friends of mine in New Brunswick tell me about how much worse health care is in that province compared to Alberta. Good luck getting a specialist. I didn't think we could get any worse in this country than what we have in Alberta. When you look at the big picture, we are holding out really well.
Like anything the UCP government does, you sort of have to put on your UCP/Conservative/MAGA/Separatist/Capitalism hat and try to see their point of view.
First, the UCP are living in their own bubble. They are terrible at communicating anything to the public, and they are really poor salespeople. They know they will likely win the next election, that without a split conservative vote they are a shoe-in. We will save talking about gerrymandering for another day. They have sort of thrown out this new health policy, without explaining what they are thinking.
The stark reality is Alberta is fighting for professionals, not only with the rest of Canada, but globally. If you are a doctor, you can get a job.....anywhere. Why would they want to live in a place like, say, Thompson, Manitoba when they could be living in Florida with no snow and low taxes? If I was a doctor, it would kind of be a no-brainer for me. This is the kind of problem we are facing. Giving doctors an opportunity to make more money will bring more doctors to Alberta and make it more competitive. We have a low provincial income tax, we have the mountains, and now doctors can make money on the side for those willing to pay....follow the money. Now I understand the concerns about people jumping the line, and in reality, they will likely do it by taking out a line of credit if they want their new hip or knee that badly.
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The market will indeed decide....that is what the UCP are thinking here. I interviewed my own doctor during a recent appointment. He said in short order, many doctors will come to Alberta and getting health care will actually be easier, because they will over-estimate the amount of private work they will do, and in turn to do more public health care. That is the likely outcome here. One thing that does bother me, is they have not really ironed out the number of what percent of the work must be private or public. You can guess doctors will be allowed to do as much private work as their hearts desire. If that is the case, it will attract many more doctors here.....and they will then find the only work is in the PUBLIC system....which is a massive win for public health care.
This is the experience in other countries.
The loser in all this will be health care in the rest of Canada. If you thought health care was bad in other provinces now, it is about to get really bad. In a perfect world, we would have an entire country that would be using public health care and everything would be great, but many of these professionals are taking the money in the States....and the weather. Even those doctors we have recruited from overseas...it is not long before they leave. The doctors that remain will do so as an act of charity....perhaps their family is here, they don't want to move the kids, etc.
At the end of the day, this move by the UCP government does seem backwards, but in reality it will likely make the public system stronger. We must keep the government's feet to the fire however, so that they FUND public system properly. In the meantime, lets lure all those doctors here.