Health Care and a Healthy Imagination by Danielle Smith

There was a time when essentially the whole of the world was ruled by autocracies.  The most powerful exerted control over the least powerful, until the least powerful decided not to put up with it, and rose up to take power, appointing a new king, and the cycle would continue.

And then, sometime before Christ walked the earth, there was born of necessity and imagination an idea of determining rule by lots or votes..  and democracy was born in ancient Greece.

And that idea took hold, until we see the last vestiges of autocratic rule falling one by one.. next up, Libya.

The key to all this was the ability of a leader to use their imagination to see an alternative to "business as usual" and an electorate to open their minds to that vision and to support progress to a better alternative.

Such is the case with Health Care in Alberta and in Canada.

Ironically, while the conservative point of view is often equated with regressive policy, doing things "like we did in the old days", the current politic, at least in Health Care, is such that the cranky old men are for the most part populating liberal points of view.

"This is how Tommy Douglas did it, and goshdarn it, that's good enough for me."

But it isn't good enough.

People are dying because they can't access health care - even as governments pour more and more of their tax dollars into an antiquated system that obviously isn't working.

The fact that they are dying "for free" seems little consolation to their loved ones.

And sadly, in North America there is an alarming lack of vision in how to improve things, mostly attributable to the "grumpy old men" wanting things to just stay the same.

So - in the U.S., we have politicians who think that health care should be bought and sold like any other consumer product, because that's how they've always done it, and the fear of "socialism" is used to keep the citizenry at bay.

In Canada, essentially, we are seeing the same thing, with mainstream politicians, particularly liberal politicians, thinking that broader government control over the means of delivery of health care is the ONLY model, because that's how we've "always done it", and the fear of "capitalism" infecting health care is used to keep the citizenry at bay.

Meanwhile the world has moved past both countries, and the U.S. under Obama has hamfisted a patchwork of health care insurance, making it an offense not to buy insurance from a  private insurer, and suggesting that is "universal health care."

In Canada, liberal fear mongers talk incessantly about "two tiered" care and "jumping the cues" and "checkbook health care" - but betray their own fear, ignorance, and most importantly, lack of imagination that prevents any real progress in helping our citizens who need something better than business as usual.

Except for Danielle Smith.

While the tired PC Party and their fellow liberal fear mongers offer nothing but what we already have, Danielle Smith is offering something different.

Not "U.S. Style" health care, but Japanese and Swedish and Switzerland style health care.  Looking beyond "what we've always done" to new ideas based upon what others have started, in countries running the gamut between broad socialism and aggressive capitalism.

Think about this for just a moment.

Danielle Smith is committed to public funding, but expanding private delivery.  Which is a model used almost everywhere in the world other than here and in the U.S.

And here's a secret that the Liberals, NDP, and PC Party of Alberta don't often explain to Albertans.

Virtually 100% of family physicians deliver the day-in and day-out health care to Albertans using a private delivery model which is publicly funded.

Is Tommy Douglas rolling over in his grave?  No, not at all, because it's been that way since he help set up our health care system.  Family doctors in their own homes, their own offices, in clinics built with other doctors, paying out of their pockets for those offices construction, maintenance and improvement.

Tell me I'm wrong "Friends of Medicare".

Tel me that your family doctor operates out of a government built and government operated clinic.

.. (toe tapping).

So, let's maybe drop the fear mongering and ask ourselves why that system is acceptable and working, but the idea of other modes of public funded, private delivery is such an evil. 

Oh, and let's also discuss the reality that we have a pathetically uneven "two tiered system" in health care already.  Because more and more, as Alberta and Canada betray a tired and broken system that can't deliver the quality of care in the speed that people require, we see our citizens who have the money travelling to places like the Mayo Clinic to get their health care.

While those without money get in line for months in Canada.

That's a reality that the raging grannies don't like to acknowledge - or, if they do, they suggest that all that is needed is more money.

Except that doesn't work - and Alberta proves it.  We pay amongst the highest levels of funding for health care in Canada, yet aren't even close to delivering services in a manner which is the quickest or the best even by current Canadian standards.

Did you know?

Canada has the fourth-highest per capita health spending in the world, but ranks near the bottom of OECD nations in results. Almost all European countries have better results with less spending.

Even with its elderly population, Japan has a much better health system despite spending one-half of what Canada does on health care.

Canada not only spends twice as much on health as New Zealand does, we spend triple what they do on pharmaceuticals. Canada ranks second in the world in drug costs.

Just spending more money isn't the answer.


Imagination and being open to change is.