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Alberta NDP Produces Health Care for Dummies Booklet for Premier Ralph Klein

Posted on: Saturday, 13 November 2004, 18:00 CST

EDMONTON (CP) - In a bid to flush out Ralph Klein's plans for health care reform in Alberta, the opposition NDP offered him some light reading material Saturday - a booklet called Health Care for Dummies.

New Democratic Party leader Brian Mason said if the Alberta premier read the 25-cent, four-page booklet, he could save Alberta taxpayers millions of dollars.

The stunt was a reaction to Klein comments at the beginning of the 28-day provincial election campaign that health care reforms were too complicated to discuss prior to the Nov. 22 vote.

When the premier was pressed to reveal his plan for health care reform during last week's televised leaders debate, Klein maintained he doesn't have a plan to privatize health care.

"I don't know which is worse - a secret plan to privatize health care or no plan at all," Mason said Saturday.

He said he has no doubt that the premier does have a plan for cutting health care costs to government, but doesn't want to share it because Albertans won't like it.

Mason noted the Tories have produced several reports advocating such reforms as hiking health care premiums, delisting services, expanding private delivery of health care and charging fees.

"His plans for health care are not complicated - they are just unpopular," said Mason, whose party had two seats when the election was called.

Klein has said repeatedly he will consult Albertans before radically changing the $8 billion health care system.

"I want the people to give us their thoughts," he said Friday. "We'll find out from Albertans where they want to go."

Klein said the first step he plans to take if re-elected is to hold an international symposium to find out what works elsewhere in the world and go from there.

"If the proposals and recommendations for reform are so radical and different, perhaps some of this could go to the electorate - certain components," Klein mused to reporters.

But Mason said he has concerns about the how comprehensive or objecte a public consultation would be by the Tories.

"When he pretends that he now wants to consult with Albertans, it is merely a dodge so that he doesn't have to talk about his real plans for public health care in the election," he said.

Mason said Klein's agenda is to reduce the cost of health care to government by shifting more of the cost onto members of the public.

"It will clearly be shifting the burden onto the backs of low income people. He will allow people with means to buy their way to the front of the line and the rest of us will have to do with second best."

While Klein has said he has no secret agenda to privatize health care, he hasn't ruled out further privatization.

Mason said that experiments the Klein government has embarked upon so far show that private delivery of health care costs more.

He noted that a recently-announced program to address a backlog of hip surgeries in Calgary has shifted them to private facilities that are charging the government more than the cost of performing the surgeries in public facilities.

He urged Klein to read page three of Health Care for Dummies.

"Even from the government's own numbers we can see that where services are publicly delivered they cost less and waiting times are lower. In Calgary, where they deliver some of the services through private clinics, the costs are higher and the waiting lists are longer."

Klein has long talked about making radical changes to the province's $8 billion public health care system to change it from being a system that is "everything to everybody" to more of a backstop against catastrophic situations.

He said last spring his government was prepared to the break the Canada Health Act, if necessary, in order to save a public health care system he contends is no longer economically sustainable.

Source: Canadian Press

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