Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping touting the supposed benefits of private surgical clinics in January in the old Grace Hospital in Calgary (Photo: Screenshot of Alberta Government video).

If it is truly an axiom of practical politics that you can you can never believe anything until it’s been officially denied, we now have confirmation Danielle Smith’s government is bent on privatizing health care in Alberta. 

Home of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, publisher of Premier Danielle Smith’s past privatization musings (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

We knew this already, of course, so it doesn’t exactly qualify as news. 

Ms. Smith herself has said many things that clearly indicate she drank the Kool-aide ™ back in the 1990s, when she was an intern at the Fraser Institute, and believes firmly that health care fully belongs in the private sector.

The most persuasive recent example was her June 2021 (non) academic paper for the University of Calgary’s public-private-propaganda partnership (P4?), the so-called School of Public Policy, wherein she asserted we can no longer afford universal social programs that are 100 per cent paid by taxpayers,” and that includes public health care.

“Once people get used to the concept of paying out of pocket for more things themselves then we can change the conversation on health care,” she confidently wrote. 

“But we could take it one step further,” Ms. Smith continued. “If we establish the principle of Health Spending Accounts, then we can also establish co-payments.”

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr).

Naturally, many Alberta voters will refuse to believe that Ms. Smith meant what she said, the traditional response to politicians who advocate really dangerous stuff. 

This may change, though, now that Health Minister Jason Copping has firmly denied there’s anything to the idea that privatizing delivery of health care means we’re privatizing health care. After all, folks, we’re all mavericks out here in the New West, and if there’s one thing mavericks don’t trust, it’s official denials!

All kidding aside, Mr. Copping’s rather lengthy statement yesterday about “chartered surgical facilities” denying that these privately run, publicly subsidized surgical mini-hospitals are evidence that the UCP Government is privatizing our public health care system a piece at a time suggests that government has been doing some polling and is getting back a message that Albertans don’t exactly trust them on this file. 

“Chartered surgical facilities are part of our public health care system,” Mr. Copping insisted. “These are surgeries paid for by the province, just like surgeries that happen in a hospital …”

“It is all one publicly funded system,” he said – sounding to me through the lines of his press release just a little plaintive. 

“The benefits of chartered surgical facilities are many, including allowing the system to increase capacity overall,” Mr. Copping stated. “With these facilities set up to handle more routine surgeries, they can complete a larger number than at hospitals alone. This also allows hospitals to handle more complex and urgent surgeries, which is exactly what they should be doing.”

Alas, this is the stuff of the fantasies purveyed by the Fraser Institute, the Vancouver-based propaganda factory financed by the corporate sector to persuade us the private sector is the answer to all our problems, even long surgical wait times. The Fraser Institute’s corporate funders, needless to say, are always looking for an opportunity to shove their boots in the door, so they can force it open a little wider until Ms. Smith’s dream of fully privatized health care is realized. 

You’re not going to increase capacity, of course, when there are limited numbers of health care professionals – say, orthopedic surgeons – to go around. You’re just going to move the capacity from public hospitals to for-profit private hospitals staffed by surgeons who will lobby for more profitable opportunities. 

Somehow privatization advocates like Mr. Copping always forget to remind their listeners that even when they’re theoretically part of the public system, surgeries in private hospitals seem to end up costing more than the same surgeries did in public facilities – a decade ago it was about $500 more per surgery for hip and knee operations, and it’s certainly more now.

And when people like Premier Smith wax poetic about the topic – “maybe moms would even be able to opt for longer stays to get used to the new life they are going to have with their baby, the way they used to at the Grace Hospital,” she rhapsodized in her SPP essay – she didn’t mention what happens when a private clinic goes broke, as the one Ralph Klein’s government allowed to set up in the old Grace Hospital did. 

The public has to pay to clean up the mess is what happens – rather like Ms. Smith’s solution to oil industry pollution, come to think of it – and public hospitals have to pick up the slack … delaying other surgeries. 

As for dumping more complex and urgent surgeries on the public sector, that allows privatization advocates to falsely claim private hospitals are more efficient and better run than they are. 

Well, at least the UCP isn’t talking about letting surgeons do their own booking – yet.

You can count on it, though, that this will soon be being talked up as a “cost saving” measure, and surgeons will be yakking righteously about the right of patients to choose their own doctors. 

Research shows that’s when the system really goes to hell in a handbasket – when there’s actually an incentive for double-dipping doctors in private practice to prolong waits for their public-sector patients.

But I’ve said enough. We can now say with confidence that privatization is on the UCP’s agenda. After all, it’s been officially denied. 

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24 Comments

  1. If anything tends to concentrate the mind of a government it is an imminent election they are not confident they will win. So the UCP will conveniently forget or deny what they have said in the past, even if it wasn’t that long ago, if it threatens their chances of winning.

    If they can’t do that, they will muddy the waters, as in private clinics are not really private health care. Of course another important consideration for them is hospitals can’t make the generous political contributions that the owners of private health care facilities can. Likewise for those who own or run energy companies and who would benefit from a government funded oil well cleanup, even if they can afford to pay for it themselves. The old Wildrose Party was often quite against this sort of political quid pro quo that fueled much of the PC’s fundraising in their declining years. Of course Smith threw in the towel in the battle against the PC’s way before her more principled colleagues did.

    So Smith and the UCP will spend some time over the next few months denying a lot of things they have said, done or supported in the recent past. At times Smith can sound convincing, but I have some doubts that she will fool us again this time.

  2. sure we can afford governent funded health care. Alberta can always implement a sales tax

    Had a good laugh at Smith’s suggestion of co pays. Right, with more people having to rely on food banks, people not being able to afford rent, cost of living going up, gee I’m sure all those people will have $50 for every visit to the doctor’s office. ($50 is the co pay for some one I know in Maui)

    The min. wage in most provinces, if not all isn’t even a lving wage. Guess that means those people wont’ be able to pay for health care and can die.

    Most of those alberta politicians look like they were not alive when we didn’t have government funded health care in Canada. I am old enough to remember it. I can remember over hearing adults talking about they were O.K. financially with a lay off but there were going to be real problems if any one got sick because they no longer had their MSA via their former employer.

    1. I have no doubt we can afford public health care and public delivery. It begins by stopping the massive UCP giveaways like $20B to oil companies, who will take that money away to their U.S. shareholders. It begins with stopping gambling $7.5B on pipelines that won’t ever be built. It starts with stopping foolish, ill-advised giveaways to Turkish pharmaceutical companies for overpriced products that don’t meet Canadian standards and will never be sold, even subsidized at half the actual cost. It starts with terminating the constant tens of millions dribbled away to the unaccountable War Room. And those are just the things that we know about. How much more of Albertans’ money has been tossed to the wind?

      People in Alberta do forget that health care was not “free” up until the 1960s. It’s not “free” now. We all pay for it. But now the UCP want up to pay twice: through our taxes and through user fees. The Turkish Tyle-not was just the tip of the iceberg. Pay double the cost, receive less product.

  3. Before long, Danielle Smith will be signing a Coroplast promise to protect public health care, but not public delivery.

  4. Twitter summary of Copping’s statement: “No. No, we won’t. No, never. Not even a little bit. LOOK THERE!” (Aside, to aide:) “Do it quick, while they’re distracted!”

  5. Are there any examples of a modern Canadian conservative politician doing aything in good faith? Just one? It’s good for the UCP that they can fool all rural Albertans all the time.

    1. Cool: I suppose it depends on how you define modern, but I think the answer is yes. Brian Mulroney pushed his government to forgive the debt theoretically owed to Canada by the Caribbean nations, which benefited both us and them and, if I recall correctly, was opposed by bankers who got to keep showing liabilities backed by Canada on their balance sheets. It was a decent gesture that was also smart. He also stood up to Margaret Thatcher on South Africa. Joe Clark meant well, but was dogged by bad luck and didn’t really accomplish anything. Erin O’Toole, in my opinion, had the potential to restore a human face to Canadian Conservatism, but he too was consigned to the edges of history by bad luck, bad people on his own side, and the Liberals, who should never be underestimated. DJC

      1. Thanks for this reply. I was considering the last twenty years or so when I think modern conservatives (i.e. alt-right)

  6. Well, I think the issue is semantics. Im pretty sure the UCP doesnt want to privatize “primary healthcare”. You know, the healthcare that society should have something to say about. Treating childhood diseases and development, infectious diseases, you know, stuff people in the 60’s would have viewed as healthcare when they made up the idea.

    As to advanced healthcare, where everything is considered healthcare so it can all be socialized. You are right, I think they want to avoid that.

    1. Wait, what? You think the Take Back Alberta faction now directing Danielle Smith and the UCP are pro-vaccine? Vaccines have prevented infectious diseases and childhood illness. The whole border blockade at Coutts was anti-vaccine, in case you missed it. If you think they’ll stop at Covid vaccines, I have a mosquito-infested swamp in Florida to sell you, or maybe a ticket to Kentucky. Those dryland parts of Alberta where TBA holds stead keep bringing us popular unvaccinated hits like measles, mumps, etc. Let’s not forget whooping cough.

      https://www.longwoods.com/newsdetail/9769

      https://globalnews.ca/news/9528321/asbury-revival-measles-case-health-canada/

      1. Of course I think they are for scientific based public health solutions.

        What they arent for is progressive based wedge issued designed strategies:
        https://reason.com/2023/03/23/virtue-signaling-by-scientific-journals-backfires-new-study-finds/

        https://reason.com/podcast/2023/03/08/dr-vinay-prasad-youre-right-not-to-trust-public-health/

        Keep in mind, the TBA people are Albertans and Canadians. They have a right to fight for their beliefs and be represented by the politicians in power.

        Its not the job of politicians to only represent those who agree with them.

        1. Bret: thank you for the red herrings. You might want to consider Alkyl’s “duck test.” The articles you linked to come from a commercial publisher and its masthead reads: “Free Minds and Free Markets” which is a virtue signal in itself.

          The article really says nothing of note beyond the fact that Trump supporters do not understand how science works and Biden supporters did not change their views. So what?

          As to the bias of the publication:
          Can you name a single segment of our industrial economy, outside of primary agricultural production and the lowest levels of the service sector, where there is a free market ie: where there are not three or four corporations controlling 70% or greater of the world market. The answer is zero. Free enterprise disappeared with the rise of the telegraph and the modern corporation. That news has taken a while to reach the raw resource hinterlands.

        1. Perhaps.

          Or, it just might be the case for example that:

          “Before I move on, let me just point out a common theme in the arguments of COVID-19 contrarians, which is that “science has been wrong before,” which is then used to claim that efforts to “police misinformation” will entrap innocent physicians and scientists who simply hold a minority viewpoint about an issue and conflating such physicians and scientists with those spreading conspiracy theories, antivax disinformation, and quackery. It’s an intellectually dishonest comparison between apples and oranges, but it’s one that comes up all the time, probably because it resonates with a lot of doctors who don’t understand the difference between quackery and misinformation versus legitimate scientific disagreements and mistakenly view such efforts as “censorship.” . . . For all his self-proclaimed high level knowledge and skills in statistics, peer review, clinical trials, Bayesian analysis, and Science in general, he clearly lacks some very basic skills in skepticism, such as recognizing conspiracy theories, logical fallacies, and techniques of misinformation, coupled with the ability to make a conscious effort to separate one’s own preexisting ideological beliefs from one’s science. That’s why he has become a useful idiot for COVID-19 deniers in much the same way that scientists in the middle part of the last century became useful idiots for tobacco companies.”–“Dr. Vinay Prasad whines about the “misinformation police.” Hilarity ensues.”

          https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2022/11/16/prasad-whines-about-the-misinformation-police-hilarity-ensues/

          “Of course, the very title of Dr. Prasad’s little rant should tell you what I’m talking about when I point out that “COVID-19 contrarian” doctors often echo antivax talking points. There was a time when I used to give people like Dr. Prasad the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were clueless that the arguments they were making were not new and, prior to the pandemic, had been staples of antivaccine propaganda going back decades. Indeed, on several occasions, that benefit of the doubt led me to state emphatically and unequivocally that, no matter what I thought of him otherwise, I didn’t think that Dr. Prasad is was any way antivaccine. Nearly a year later, I can no longer say this about Dr. Prasad with nearly much confidence as I used to. As for the other “contrarians,” they have been told time and time again, with examples, that these talking points are old antivax tropes. They either refuse to believe or continue to use them anyway. Truly, the “new school” COVID-19 antivaxxers are coming more and more to resemble “old school” antivaxxers from days gone by.”–“Dr. Vinay Prasad echoes a common antivax trope that portrays concern about a deadly disease as irrational fear”

          https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/dr-vinay-prasad-echoes-the-common-antivax-trope-of-portraying-a-desire-not-to-catch-a-deadly-disease-as-irrational-and-mental-illness/

  7. This reminds me of every negotiations I’ve ever been involved in where one or the other party says, “It’s not about the money.”
    when they say that, you know for a fact it’s about the money. So, if the UCP says, “oh no, we would never…” It means they definitely will.

  8. I amazed that UCP members do not look to their federal Conservative cousins to see what happens when a political party is divided.

    The federal Liberal Party has been in power since 2015. Not because they are the greatest thing since sliced bread. For the most part the CPC has awarded them Government on a silver platter. It has been a cake walk for the Grits.

    The Liberals are in power because the CPC is a divided party make up of a number of small single issue, forever bickering tents.

    Their performance, their leadership, and their election platforms have been abysmal. Imagine a national Party than can only succeed in winning 8 of 116 urban seats in Montreal, GTA, and Vancouver. When as a party you focus on social conservative issues that do no resonate with urban voters and you fall apart at the seams when it comes to immigration, environment, and child care, etc there is bound to be an unhappy ending for you.

    UCP members would do well to look at this record and have some very serious consideration as to where they are going as a Party.

  9. Following the money in this instance is a fairly straightforward affair because it is simply a case of:

    Danielle Smith, the ‘duck test’ [“The duck test is a form of abductive reasoning, usually expressed as “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” “The test implies that a person can identify an unknown subject by observing that subject’s habitual characteristics. It is sometimes used to counter abstruse arguments that something is not what it appears to be.”], and some additional considerations that might be worth noting [In addition to everything that has been stated above, again noting that anybody that has been following along is already well aware of the available facts, the constant political spin/deliberate deception that surrounds the lobbying efforts directed at healthcare privatization, and the discernment necessary to distinguish between the facts and the intentional spin/deception.]:

    1. “Gaslighting is an insidious form of manipulation and psychological control. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true . . . Over time, a gaslighter’s manipulations can grow more complex and potent, making it increasingly difficult for the victim to see the truth.”

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/gaslighting

    2. “People who lie are pretty consistent. They lie without thinking and it comes natural to them. Honesty is not a conviction that they live by.”

    3. Apparently the UCP political machine and its ‘leader’ [“The registry lists more than a dozen pages of issues Smith lobbied the government on during her years with the business group. They include a “free enterprise approach to delivering public services such as health spending accounts and vouchers in child care.”] needs an entire cadre of lobbyists to further the desired healthcare privatization outcome, that is for example:

    “Hal Danchilla, co-founder of Canadian Strategy Group and a lobbyist for private health companies, was selected by the Alberta Medical Association to represent doctors in a working group that collaborated with the UCP government to “present alternatives” to the UCP government’s proposed cuts to physician pay. The deal was rejected by doctors on Tuesday night, with some doctors complaining the agreement aligned with a “mandate towards privatizing health services.””

    https://pressprogress.ca/top-ucp-donor-who-lobbies-for-private-health-companies-represented-alberta-doctors-in-discussions-with-ucp-government/

    4. Finally,

    “Do private procedures cost less?”, “. . . data obtained from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) shows that knee replacement surgery in a public hospital, paid by the province, costs about $10,000. The same surgery in a private clinic can reportedly cost patients up to $28,000. When the province pays for the knee replacement surgery in a for-profit clinic, the amount is kept secret, due to confidentiality agreements.

    Andrew Longhust, a health policy researcher at Simon Fraser University in B.C., says the lack of transparency makes it challenging to understand the real costs. . . . so the profit margin remains a mystery to patients and taxpayers. “I think what’s important for people to understand is that the government is very fond of saying, ‘Well, it’s cheaper in for-profit facilities.’ But a lot of it has not undergone any independent scrutiny.” That lack of transparency, Longhurst said, has led some health authorities to reverse course when the costs of doing some procedures in private clinics proved to be too high.”

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/private-health-care-taxpayer-money-1.6777470

  10. Great, publicly funded surgeries. Two questions:

    1) Where will the staff come from? A surgical suite is useless without surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses and support staff. If we had all those people, we could re-open existing surgeries in existing hospitals. There’d be no need for new “chartered surgical facilities.”

    2) Are they gonna be for-profit or non-profit companies? NOT ONE WORD from Copping or Smith.

    These two questions are central to whether the UCP can, or really intends to, “improve” health care in Alberta. Not one damn thing will improve unless they can hire, or train, more health-care staff. And if they can—then who needs the so-called “chartered” surgical companies?

  11. I don’t believe anything the UCP says. A provincial election is up and coming, and the UCP wants to try and save their butts.

  12. The UCP have lied their way into power. More lies, including those ‘of omission, to follow.
    It still intrigues me, the part that the IDU plays in all this. Chief of The IDU is a known personal friend to JK, PP, Ezra L. and does (alt-right) ‘business’ with trumplicans, Bolsonaros, Erduans and Orbans in the international setting.

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