There was another big health care announcement by the Alberta Government yesterday, the second in as many days, this one about the further deconstruction of Alberta Health Services and the shuffling of important health care activities among newly created bureaucracies like a pea under some walnut shells.
Where’s cancer care gone? What about organ transplants and tissue donations?
Well, now they’ll be hiding under the Acute Care Alberta shell, the expensive new bureaucracy created by the United Conservative Party that, according to Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, will “ensure Albertans receive the high-quality, coordinated care they deserve – delivered when and where they need it most.”
If that phrase sounds familiar, nearly identical words popped up in Monday’s news release and news conference about the UCP’s planned “patient focused” funding scheme for Alberta hospitals, the flaws with which we examined in this space yesterday.
But despite similar talking points, which will be repeated again and again in the months ahead, there are significant differences between the way the changes announced yesterday were presented and the ones from the day before.
While the fairy tale about better and faster health care services for Albertans was told in both announcements, unlike Monday, yesterday there was no talk of a grand economic theory behind the changes being plotted.
Instead of being lectured at a news conference and in a high-pressure sales video worthy of a timeshare pitch about how “patient focused funding” imported from the United States (and Australia!) would increase transparency, reduce wait times and bring new surgeons flocking to Alberta with dollar signs in their eyes, there was no justification for yesterday’s announcement beyond rote promises.
As noted here yesterday, the activity-based funding story has been around for years and has been tried and failed in many places, most notably the hot mess immediately to Canada’s south. But it is a fancy market-fundamentalist managerial theory that can be trotted out as a justification, even if it isn’t very likely to work.
The simplest explanation for yesterday’s bare bones announcement – which was delivered by press release alone without a news conference at which reporters could ask embarrassing questions, even if rationed to two per questioner – is that there simply is no economic or managerial justification that makes sense for transferring cancer care and tissue donations away from AHS.
Indeed, when you parse the words of yesterday’s press release and think about what it’s saying, the whole idea is nuts!
“Creating specialized focus for cancer care and organ and tissue donation and transplantation will ensure the best care in these key areas that are important for a high-functioning health care system,” says the release. But the obvious fact is that there is already a specialized focus on those areas, and shuffling them into an expensive new bureaucracy that exists for no purpose but to speed the breakup and privatization of AHS makes no sense from the perspective of delivering better health care for Albertans.
“Acute Care Alberta will ensure improved and dedicated access to the best health care possible,” ACA CEO Chris Eagle was quoted saying. Of course, common sense suggests it will do no such thing.
It’s not quite accurate, though, to say there is no economic justification at all for this – although there is none that will benefit Albertans.
It is extremely difficult to see this as anything but an even more aggressive step in the UCP’s ongoing health care privatization project, one of Premier Danielle Smith’s favourite hobbyhorses.
Something that looks very much like the recreation of the Alberta Cancer Board – which was integrated into AHS in 2009 – could have a certain nostalgic appeal, one supposes, if not much utility.
Including tissue donation in the same package smacks of a mechanism to permit and encourage blood and organ sales by Big Pharma, a development that Canadians have been warned against continually but that is beloved by market fundamentalist evangelists.
So if you want to understand these latest changes in Alberta’s health care system, follow the money. This about who is likely to benefit.
Alas, Dear Readers, it is unlikely to be you.
A joke? Mark Carney told a joke? Quelle horreur!
It takes a lot of brass for supporters of political parties like the Conservative Party of Canada and Alberta’s United Conservative Party to get their knickers in a twist about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s mild joke about Premier Smith.
These are the guys who took coffee and donuts to the gentlemen with Fuck Tr*deau flags on their trucks, for crying out loud, and they’re going all snowflakey about how Mr. Carney chuckled that “we won’t send Danielle Smith” to appear on Fox News?
Oh my gosh! The disrespect! Postmedia political columnist Rick Bell devoted 800 aggrieved words, give or take, to the topic!
Well, I suppose you can’t blame the federal Conservatives for trying to find something, anything, that’ll stick to Mr. Carney – so far without much success.
Now, there’s a school of thought that being serious and dad-like is Mr. Carney’s brand, and revealing that he has a gentle sense of humour was an unforced error. Could be, I suppose. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Carney, adopting his usual serious mien, expressed his respect for the premier in a subsequent media appearance.
But there’s also something to be said for the view of political writer Evan Scrimshaw that in politics “amorphous traits of likability and perceived normalcy are important.” Yup, sometimes they may even help a politician get elected!
And if you actually watch the snippet the Cons are screeching about, Mr. Carney came across as both likeable and normal, his joke harmless.
The same cannot be said of federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
Yes, Carney told a joke, a fairly light hearted one at that, so it is fairly clear Smith is humourless and thin skinned. Maybe all the criticism she has been getting for her visits to US to the great tariff abuser which seem to have not accomplished anything has made her even more cranky and irritable than usual.
Of course her never ending health care reorganization misadventures have also been well criticized too. Despite all her glib happy talk about health care, things do not seem to improve and she is having a hard time making Carney as much of a scapegoat for her shortcomings as the former PM.
At least with all going on Federally, we are not talking much about the UCP’s expensive private health facilities and procedures or why the former AHS was fired, so really Smith should be more cheerful and take some consolation from all that. Although, perhaps she realizes this is only be a temporary reprieve and we may get back to focusing on all those AHS scandals after the Federal election.
Reading eight hundred brain numbing words deserves kudos and perhaps a slightly amended quotation, with apologies to Kipling: ‘You are a braver man than I am’.
“The Joke” feels like another “That’s weird” moment where Conservative outrage seems contrived and strategic, and the rest of us are disgusted by their blatant gaslighting.
This kind of Conservative projection is one more reason I won’t vote for them. Unfortunately their smug meanness is why (too many) others will.
I call dibs on using “Amorphous Traits” for my jam band’s name and “Perceived Normalcy” for the title of track 1.
😉
I know many others and am now personally being treated for cancer here in Alberta. Overall the system seems to be working well and the treatment, in my experience, high quality and timely. Sure, you get variety in the quality of healthcare professionals involved in your case, but the vast majority are caring and very capable.
This change makes me somewhat nervous. I’m quite content with how my treatment is being managed, don’t think the system is broken and fear this “improvement”.
Could it be that the government is carving off a sucessful division so that they have something to crow about? There are lots or areas needing improvement in Alberta healthcare, cancer treatment is low on the list, in my opinion.
Stripping assets is a time honoured tradition for Smith and her market fundamentalist buddies. Profits are to privatized and losses socialized. Smith has been telling us for a decade what she would do and she was elected by the majority of voters in Alberta. That’s democracy. As the man said, “you bought the ticket, enjoy the ride”. The really mirthful part to all of this is the UCP are still leading in the polls according to “338”.
Yes, 338 Canada still has the UCP well ahead in the polls and on track for a bigger majority than last time. But I take some consolation from the fact that the last poll included in Phillippe’s aggregation is a Leger from January of this year, which would be before the corruptcare scandal became widely discussed, and some of the other issues like tariffs, hobnobbing with Ben Shapiro, more coal mining and so on got into the news. Perhaps I am clutching at straws but I am hoping the next polls, whenever those are, show a different picture. Though a Carney victory would doubtless play into the UCP’s hands.
Wish Carney had, “Turn Oil and Mining Into Crown Corporations” on his bucket list. Once Albertans had that extra cash in their pocketbooks along with everyone else, Dixie Dani would last about seven minutes along with all her ilk–male or female.
“All the libs are mean to conservative women” is the usual crybully response. It’s the same crybully response the dems are having in the USA after they tanked an election to a gameshow host after running zero platform. All they hadda put out as policy was, “Medicare for all” which is supported by the stats . They would have buried the Orange Man in a landslide. Same with Dani–if she blames Carney and her healthcare scandal drowns her–she can crybully that it was misogyny from the libs and not her personal failings. Someone needs to remind her that people didn’t hate Thatcher because she was a Conservative Female (TM)–she was a heartless, scheming shrew who decided she was powerful enough to enact a poll tax without repercussions after gutting UK businesses and social services.
You can’t blame That Guy for your policy failings or corruption fallout.
Not everyone can be a strong conservative woman like Margaret Thatcher. Only the Iron Lady has inspired headlines like “21 Incredibly Angry Songs About Margaret Thatcher”.
Maybe Danielle Smith could change her name to Margaret Thatcher and take credit for all those songs. Marlaina Thatcher has a certain je-ne-sais-quoi.
Heya Abs, I’m with ya. Right now the amount of Trumpy songs is (pardon le pun) off the charts.
Too bad Stompin’ Tom and Ian Tyson are gone. They’d be all over this like HP sauce on a steak.
Indeed, when Mark Carney told the packed house in Calgary last night that he is not a career politician, someone in the crowd shouted, “Thank God!”
Pierre Poilievre isn’t the only one with something to worry about. People in line were talking about how every day brings more bad news from the provincial government and it’s time for them to go. Nobody used the premier’s name. Seems she is being erased from our collective memories before the door hits her on the way out in 2027. If you do terrible things every day and still no one mentions your name, is that the biggest failure of all?
Abs: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” – Oscar Wilde.
Do remember back in the day there was an expression,
“I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you spell my name right”.
Another Karen hissy fit. This time in reaction to what sounded like an off the cuff comment. She even found a way to try spinning it as misogynistic referring herself as a strong conservative woman. Well, we certainly can’t accuse her of humility. Some traits of the self described stable genius may be rubbing off as she tries to please and appease Trump.
Maybe it’s time to drop the double standard and look at her own caucus. In a little over a minute into Nate Horner’s 2025 budget speech at the Alberta Legislature he spoke disparagingly of the then Prime Minister and his family with the words ‘Trudeau the elder’ and ‘Trudeau junior’. The former was last in office in 1984 and has been deceased since 2000, almost twenty five years dead and still fodder for the dimwits. They’re milking it shamelessly.
Justin Trudeau’s choice to not respond showed dignity and class, traits sadly lacking on the UCP benches.
That’s about how long they can go without mentioning Trudeau Sr or Jr, or “Laurentian elites”. Lorne Gunter stood up on his hind paws to say that in the same column, practically the same paragraph that Carney was not only DISRESPECTFUL but SEXIST. Like the bullies in this province didn’t literally drive a sitting MLA from office with their endless harassment. He also called him a Laurentian elite, of course, despite him being from goddamn Edmonton. These people are pathetic losers and the louder they screech the more evident it is they realize they are about to lose BIG. I dunno what those internal polling numbers say but it cannot be good.
I honestly don’t get these people, Bird.
I’m a Lunchbox Lefty and while I’d never accuse Carney of being able to relate all that much to the struggles that the working class are presently facing…there’s a vast difference between someone willing to listen and at least put an effort into improving the situation and a career politician with zero ideas except how to enrich the corporate class.
How any working class person can even think PP is going to improve their lot…well I’m staggered, I tell ya, just staggered.
Follow the money applies to everything Marlain-a-Lago does. She and the rest of the UCP quislings are only in office to enrich themselves. These people could not care less about Albertans unless you happen to be the CEO of a fossil fuel company. And yet rural Albertans keep voting them in because Trudeau.
I’m sure Danielle Smith wants private for profit, American style healthcare. Perfect for the very wealthy, and bad for everyone else. Postmedia columnists are super busy trying to get the CPC back into power. Alas for them, because Pierre Poilievre doesn’t have the support level that Mark Carney does.
Now when I read a negative article about Mark Carney I go back to see who wrote it, yes its a Post Media writer. The America media has a similar vibe. Global News in B.C. has a similar game, but its Rustad, B.C. Conservative Party. almost every time they run an anti Eby article or any report on the NDP, they follow it up by a clip with Rustad giving an opposite opinion and why he has the right opinion.
PP just isn’t that bright. Mark Carney is and in this current world trade mess along with the assaults on people’s rights in the U.S.A. Canada needs a smart, articulate, connected P.M. who can work with others. Although Trump has currently ceased his carry on regarding Mexico, Greenland, Canada, expect it to resurface.
When Clinton was elected President some political commentators referred to Clinton and his cabinet, etc as not even knowing where the light switches were in the White House. After a year they did ask. PP wouldn’t even know the lights were out in the P.M.’s residence.
PP was suggesting he would provide 50K treatment beds for people with opioid disorders if he were elected. money would come from cancelling the safe supply program. What he doesn’t mention is B.C. has 100,000 to 125,000 people with an opioid disorder; the majority of treatment centres are privately run and very costly; where the staff would come from; what facilities would be provided and even if B.C. received all 50K beds there would be another 50K people with no safe supply or treatment. That isn’t going to work at all.
Some may ask what Carney is planning. Haven’t looked at that yet, but I do know any improvements in health care in Canada were the result of Liberal policies with NDP support. So I’d say we would be better off with Carney than PP. PP can try to present himself as P.Ministerial material. The reality is, he was part of Harper’s cabinet when he was P.M. One of the first actions Harper took was to defund women’s organizations. He then passed 9 pieces of Leg. which contravened our Consitution He was advised of this but went ahead. Result, all 9 pieces of Leg. were challenged in the Supreme Court of Canada and all 9 pieces of Leg. were over turned.
Its hard to trust the Conservatives. After Mulroney left office Stevie Cameron wrote a book, “On the Take, The Mulroney Years”. Mulroney was somewhat litigious and didn’t file against Cameron. Its hard to trust Conservatives.
“Activity-based funding” sounds much like “fee-for-service” on a massive scale. And look how well that’s been working.
Also, hospitals do far more than just surgeries. How will this work for medical inpatient units, pediatric and obstetric units, intensive and coronary care units, emergency departments, and psychiatric inpatient units? Diagnostic imaging and rehabilitation clinics and all the rest of the non- surgical care that goes on on a typical hospital?
None of this makes any sense to anyone who knows anything about the health care system.
Cornell…my b-in-law is in the same situation and has so far been well treated, except for the 2 wks isolation at home, which I still can’t wrap my head around, but thankfully, so far, so good, but I worry for him every time Marlaina and co. mention healthcare.
As far as the attacks on M.Carney , Skippy calling him a ‘political grifter’ was a Linda Blair moment, but I think he just reached another new low, when he said :
>>”voters shouldn’t think he’s any different from Trudeau because he has a banker’s haircut and wears blue socks “<>>
for all those people that can’t afford to buy a home before the biological clock runs out, and can’t afford their rent, and are using food banks, not to worry; the Con’s are going to raise your TFSA limit to $12,000…up from that paltry $7000 that’s there now.
Your Welcome Canada !<<<<<
Common Sense, right??