According to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, the $100 her government intends to charge most Albertans who want to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is just an “administration fee” to cover the current cost of a dose of the vaccine.
Ms. Smith claimed in a news conference last Thursday that the average cost over the past three years has been $110 per dose – paid by the federal government, it should be noted. This, according to the premier’s arithmetic, adds up to “about $284 million in Alberta alone that has been destroyed.”
On her weekend radio show, she said $135 million worth of doses had to be discarded just last winter. And she predicted other Canadian provinces, all of which continue to provide the vaccine to their citizens at no cost as a public health measure, will be shocked at what it costs.
This, of course, is nonsense. They all already have a pretty good idea what it’s going to cost them.
So is $110 a dose, or $100 a dose, even close to the true cost of administering the vaccine?
A lot of Albertans don’t trust the premier to give them an honest accounting of what Alberta is going to be paying now that Ottawa is no longer footing the bill for the vaccine. But from what little we know about past prices, it’s hard to see how the true per-dose cost could be anything like $100.
Cast your mind back to 2020, when the Trudeau Government was pursuing its ultimately successful strategy to procure enough vaccine for all Canadians, at a cost of $9 billion in the April 2021 budget, and was encountering criticism from political opponents that they were paying too much.
Mind you, this was before Canadian Conservative political parties had gone all the way down the Qanon rabbit hole and emerged as full-blown MAGA anti-vaxxers, so a reasoned debate was still possible.
In June 2021, a Canadian Press story revealed that while the cost of most vaccines was being treated as a trade secret by Ottawa, one accidental leak provided a little information. “The only cost per dose revealed so far was released by accident when the price for the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine was accidentally left in an email included in a package of documents released to the health committee,” the story said. “That email said Canada would pay $8.18 per dose of AstraZeneca, which would amount to $163 million for the 20 million doses ordered.”
Other stories the same year, reported different per-dose prices for different COVID vaccines.
According to one, Moderna was selling its vaccine in the United States for $15 US a dose, Pfizer its for around $24, up from $19.50 US in previous deals. European countries paid higher rates, in part because they were buying smaller volumes.
OK, five inflationary years have passed and Alberta is doing whatever it can to keep the amount of COVID vaccine purchased as small as possible – at least 250,000 doses fewer than were administered last year. But even given those factors – and even if you add in fixed health system costs, which you shouldn’t – how is it possible this could have turned into $110 a dose?
However, another 2021 story said the EU had been paying $2.15 US a dose for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine the year before. A 2024 study suggested Vietnam was managing to distribute a COVID vaccine for $1.73 a dose!
Without an honest accounting, Albertans are within their rights to suspect this is no “administrative fee.” This sounds like a tax, and a punitive one like the “sin taxes” on alcohol and tobacco that are devised to discourage the use of the product.
Surely it is not unreasonable to tell the UCP – with no apologies whatsoever to Pierre Poilievre – that it’s time for them to Axe the Vax Tax!
Alberta NDP MP calls for Ottawa to enforce Canada Health Act on COVID vaccine access
Heather McPherson, once again Alberta’s only NDP Member of Parliament, has demanded that federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel “uphold and enforce the Canada Health Act” to make Alberta’s UCP Government to axe the vax tax.
“I urge you and your government to engage Alberta directly to push for universal no-cost access to COVID-19 vaccines, including for all children under 12,” she wrote in a letter to the minister. (Children under 12 have now been excluded from being administered the vaccine by the UCP.) “I also encourage the federal government to consider supports or enforcement measures when provincial decisions undermine national health priorities and the principles of the Canada Health Act.”
The Alberta government’s plan contravenes the federal legislation, she argued, “by creating barriers based on income and geography.”
Thank you Heather!!
And for anyone residing in the BR-C riding who wants to get the vaccine, make sure you contact your new MP : since he said it was so much better to have a leader of the opposition representing your riding.
We’ll see if it’s PP that was screeching at JT that he wasn’t getting vaccines fast enough or the PP that said you should have a choice.
Well PP , a large number of Albertans choose to get it ,but are being discriminated against by the Premier, are you going to stand up for their rights?
Global News Aug 25th
Moderna’s latest Covid-19 is both approved and ‘made in Canada ‘
…facilities in both Cambridge, Ont. and Laval Que.
This year all our prefilled syringe Covid vaccine doses for Canada are on track to be produced entirely within the country…..
This end to end domestic supply chain enables fast delivery , greater self reliance and a more agile response to evolving health threats.
So, if only they could do something about Typhoid Dani (aka Cruella du’Berta)
It also further negates (impo) the need for a $110 fee.
Our premier could settle this by showing us the receipts. Alas, we are in the post-receipt era and that will never happen on her watch. Where are the receipts for the Turkish Tylenot?
The vaccine might be less than half the $100 she is charging. That is a safe estimate. Could it be that the premier is planning to pay the cost for the entire Covid vaccine program on the backs of her paying customers — i.e. us?
Rumour has it that brain worm Bobby is planning to cut off Covid vaccines south of the border. Perhaps Alberta is the testing ground for public reaction.
One thing’s for sure: our federal government is doing nothing about it. Maybe that’s because the UCP don’t care if federal health transfers are axed by $100 for each vaccine charged to a UCP client. That might suit their agenda.
It’s incredibly stupid to prefer spending about $50,000 on a Covid ICU stay, or about half that much for an average Covid hospitalization, in order to save less than $50 for a vaccine. So this is not about money or the premier would be eager to endorse vaccination. No friends, this is about getting us used to paying for health care so our premier and her caucus can privatize it. What were all her trips to the U.S. for? Is the privatization of health services already signed, sealed and doomed to be delivered into the hands of the Americans? Clever, clever.
While there is no doubt that Queen Danielle has entered her mad monarch phase (It happens to everyone.) watching her turn vaccines into a pay-to-play option is at a level of crazy that is fantastic. Considering that she, and every member of the UCP caucus, can receive their doses on the public dime, how far gone her Lord Farquaad mindset has become “Some of you will die, but that’s the sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
The pitchfork welding mob should consider making an appearance. I’ll bring the popcorn.
Once again your piece has encouraged me to write the Premier to remind her that her ethical duty to Albertans should take precedence to party pandering. And to act as a responsible financial manager; 100 vaccinations are less than 1 hospitalization.
I also wrote the NDP and the federal health ministers.
Perhaps one of them will recognize that one letter means ten voters.
Meanwhile, the UCP are flooding the political discourse with a nuclear power survey.
Alberta politics is so exhausting.
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
Does the Canada Health Act permit the province to charge administration fees for health care services which, I would say, are recommended. Secondly, can the province legally withhold these vaccination services from children under a specific age, even though these children could contract suffer severe illness and, potentially, long-term illness if they contract the disease? This is an appalling and unethical decision by Danielle Smith who has no medical qualificationC to make this decision. . the UCP
So, this is raises an important issue that is also germane to Ms McPherson’s intervention. From my understanding of the Canada Health Act, its scope is limited to “medically necessary” hospital care and physician services.
It doesn’t apply to non-hospital services like public health programmes. Thus, since the majority of immunizations in Alberta are performed either by Public Health Nurses or community pharmacists, not by physicians as they are in some provinces — Ontario, for instance — the Canada Health Act cannot constrain a province from requiring user fees for this service.
Of one thing we can be very sure, Danielle Smith lies. The only part up for debate is how big, or small it is, this time!
Marlaina has no problem giving billions of dollars to profitable fossil fuel companies, but is worried about a few million dollars (if that) to provide medically necessary vaccines? The $100 is obviously a malicious tax on those Albertans who trust scientific researched vaccines to protect themselves and others. How much does it cost to provide ICU beds to people with Covid? I hope that someone sues the UCP government when they are hospitalized because they couldn’t afford Marlaina’s vax tax.
https://www.cihi.ca/en/covid-19-hospitalization-and-emergency-department-statistics
Just as predicted, now that Pierre Poilievre has been elected and is supposed to be championing the cause of the Battle River constituents that elected him, he is nowhere to be seen or heard from. Why is he not barking out “Axe the Vax Tax” which fits right into his encyclopedia of cutesy phrases he likes to spew? This UCP Government is pushing the limit with their US style charge for everything medical agenda as the COVID shots are not the only thing that is violating the Canada Health Act. If you need treatment for Glaucoma in Alberta, be prepared to shell out money for that, even though that should be at no cost according to Dingy Danni’s pledge that you do not have to pay for medically necessary doctor visits. As time goes on her rationale keeps getting worse and worse. It makes one wonder why we are paying taxes when Smith wants to charge for everything.
Don’t be too tough on our Pierre. He is good at some things.
1. He can ride a horse and brandish a pistol without harming himself, photo courtesy of Alberta Politics.
2. He managed to lose his Carleton riding by thousands of votes.
3. Although he got the boot and became an ordinary citizen he managed to freeload his stay at Stornoway, room and board and personal chef courtesy of the Canadian taxpayer.
Why is Dani nickel and diming the Alberta citizenry when she has a reputed surplus in her budget?
She is like Trump – not making sense of her and her government’s actions.
This has NOTHING to do with covering costs and EVERYTHING to do with moving us toward a private health care system. Vaccinations will be the first thing “covered” by expensive monthly insurance payments to one the traitors buddies.
Wow, this week there are 38 people in hospital. How much is that costing?
Just wait till employers and insurance companies have to start paying for employee absentness and medical cost. Those costs are huge and the lost productivity and loss of output.
https://www.alberta.ca/stats/dashboard/respiratory-virus-dashboard.htm#wastewater-surveillance
It costs about $51,000 for an average Covid ICU stay in Canada. See link above.
An average Covid hospital stay in Canada costs about $24,400, or $927,200 for 38 patients.
Total avrrage cost right of 38 patients in hospital and one in ICU: about $978,200.
These figures are based on averages across Canada. The cost has likely risen since the study quoted above.
Well, thanks Heather McPherson.
I’ve tried to make this point a couple of times. Why wasn’t Alberta’s NDP opposition on the ball regarding the illegality of the UCP health tax?
Thanks, David, for another pertinent and witty column!
With this “Alberta-style” fee for Covid shots Smith’s trying to kill two birds with one stone- the first, to keep her anti-vax base placated and second to do her bit to destroy Canadians’ universal access to health care, aka Medicare. Smith talked in the past about getting people used to paying for necessary health services. She brings up charging for Yellow Fever vaccinations for travellers going to Africa and South America where the disease is endemic, and then conflates that with charging fees for Albertans to protect themselves from Covid infections which you can pick up from an ordinary trip to the grocery store. People who want to go on Safaris or Amazon cruises surely shouldn’t have their expenses (including travel vaccines) subsidized by taxpayers, and having worked at a public travel clinic I can assure you those costs are their smallest expense, and they don’t complain about paying them. But, charging Canadian citizens a prohibitive fee for a vaccine they need to keep themselves upright or even out of ICU’s is not only against the spirit of the Canada Health Act but sounds to me like criminal negligence. M.P. Heather MacPherson is right to bring this up with the Federal Health Minister. If a provincial government fails in protecting their citizenry then the federal government needs to step in. We may live in a province with an unhinged rogue government, but we are still Canadian citizens.
Actually, you are labouring under a popular misconception of the relationship between the federal and provincial governments. Ottawa isn’t the provinces’ Daddy, as in the “oh, you must wait ’til your Daddy gets home” disciplinarian.
Each order of government is sovereign within its own area of exclusive constitutional jurisdiction, and in Section 92.7 of the Constitution Act (1867), jurisdiction over health care is assigned to the provinces — if you can parse the Victorian-era legalese in which it is written:
“The Establishment, Maintenance, and Management of Hospitals, Asylums, Charities, and Eleemosynary Institutions in and for the Province, other than Marine Hospitals.” https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-3.html#h-21
No, the way we Canadians need to hold our provincial governments to account is not to beg Ottawa to intercede. We need to defeat them at the polls, something Alberta voters have demonstrated in this province’s 120-year history we aren’t very good at, having only done it five (5) times.
This is why I’m so infuriated at the people of southern Alberta protesting the prospect of coal mining on the Eastern Slopes. The one pressure point every politician responds to, is the prospect of losing the best job they’ll ever have, but has anyone down in that neck of the woods come out and said, “change this policy now, or we all vote NDP next time”? Nope. Not a peep.
Charging Albertans any amount for COVID vaccines is outrageous, of course. However, it’s quite irrelevant, when she is making vaccines unavailable to those who want it or required it. We should also be outraged about her limiting supplies and thereby endangering the lives of Albertans.
Even if the price was 10 cents, or $1,000, if you can’t get the vaccine in the first place, because she purposely ordered less than what’s required, does price make a difference? To me supply is a bigger issue.
It would be good to get some cost accounting from Smith and the UCP here, the $110 administrative fee seems to be pulled out of thin air and set to discourage people from getting COVID vaccines, which I sense is the only real policy here. I wonder, if a freedom of information request could get more detail on the actual costs, which I suspect are much lower.
Of course Smith and the UCP’s penny wise pound foolish approach here also fails to account for increased infections and hospitalization that will result from discouraging people to get COVID vaccinations. The cost of such hospitalizations will far exceed $110, so in the end no net money will be saved. Other provinces are smart enough to realize this, so this is why they continue to pay for and make COVID vaccinations available.
Smith’s analogies about having to pay for certain other vaccinations are of course also flawed because the examples she gave are not highly contagious respiratory infections. As she continues to try to gaslight us all, more Albertans will become ill or die because of her rigid ideological thinking or her political calculations just to keep the support of anti vaxers.
She ain’t listening. She lies. She is a MAGAT! Enough said.
You really hit it out of the park with this piece, Dave.
We have to remember that the outrageous price she is charging us is one part of the plan to make it very difficult to obtain the lifesaving Covid vaccine, all in the name of keeping her job. Pathetic, but true.
It’s ridiculous that we are the only province that has to pay.
Is this cost to assist in pp’s wife rental so she can write her book, which I’m assuming will be a best seller….
Melanie….” Slogans are Us”?
As far as write (?) my money is on ChatGP-AI .
It’s a tax on working albertans, many of whom won’t be able to afford it. A hundred dollars is a lot of money when a trip to the grocery store can easily cost you twice as much.
Albertans will have to choose rent and food over a life saving vaccine, and the UCP want to point at this WITHHOLDING OF HEALTH CARE as a drop in DEMAND.
Because they are ghouls, because they are evil, because they are stupid.
Albertans don’t like to pay for health care, we don’t even pay AHC premiums. Who does Yankee Doodle Dani think she is anyway ? Guess what Danielle? Alberta hates you more than ever now. Everyone knows you’re a liar, the only difference between everyday albertans and the nutcases that still support the UCP is they LIKE it when you lie, which is about as common as you opening your hubris filled mouth.
This government needs to be packed up and shipped off to Florida (their spiritual home) post haste
They’ve updated their information and I think added that seniors with low income also are eligible for free shots:
https://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=938073DB91799-EF1B-EA76-87A1E3CA5A46C5E3
This allowed LaGrange to say today that 85% of Albertans over 65 are eligible for free shots:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/other/alberta-health-minister-defends-covid-shot-fees-expects-other-provinces-to-follow-suit/ar-AA1LgcDn?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=544082705ae04b49980d02aadc1c3250&ei=5
They are slowly backing down but we need to keep on at them until they order more and let pharmacies give shots to everyone for free.
Adriana LaGrange emerged from hiding?! I wondered why the ground shook….
At least as frustrating as the stupid idea of charging an inflated “administration fee” is not having any way to know if you are even on a list somewhere to get it.
I believe that Danielle Smith has lost her ability to trade off electoral smarts against TBA support of her leadership.
I expect the to end in yet another walk back. Makes no sense, not popular, leaves a terrible taste in the mouths of voters.
UCP needs votes in Calgary. We live in Calgary. Apart from the dismal UCP record…how likely are we to vote UCP after been fleeced for $100 each for the shot…or getting a free covid on one our our many trips to BC?
The only conclusion that I can arrive at is that Danielle Smith and her UCP Government truly want to make Albertans second class citizens in Canada.
Love the slogan! Let’s make it go viral!
If vaccine wastage is the legitimate and only excuse for denying access then the pre-registration red tape will prevent any wastage and this no reason for the vax tax. The miserly UCP preys on the vulnerable with cruel impunity at any opportunity. Perhaps unable to make any under the table deals to acquire vaccine through their medical corporate connections this bungle is another brainless ploy to avoid federal policy and supply control? Or a cull of undesirable budgetary burdens dressed up as fiscal responsibility?
Something about which way the wind is blowing and weathermen always springs to mind. The gloating and the sick sadistic pleasure of being able to impose your will on an entire population with zero accountability along with the haughty attitude regarding any and all of the negative consequences that follow from such an imposition appears to be a core personality of the current know it all arrogant loud mouthed Provincial figurehead.
At least this is what the evidence available in the public domain suggests, for example:
“Filet mignon and haskap sorbet were on the menu as Premier Smith said that the “left has their head explode almost every other day to things that we do, we’ve got so much more coming though, they don’t know what’s about to hit them” to uproarious applause and laughter from the audience, which included orphan well corporate welfare king W. Brett Wilson.”
https://www.theprogressreport.ca/black_tie_business_elite_crowd_in_calgary_applauds_danielle_smith_as_she_brags_about_tearing_down_hundreds_of_encampments_in_edmonton
Unsurprisingly the entire political script finds itself closely aligned if not entirely copied from the one oozing out of The White House cesspool:
“And that was when I sort of had this epiphany of – the cruelty is the point because it seemed very clear to me that everybody was having a very good time causing this particular person pain, but also that this was a pretty regular part of the ritual and that everyone involved was greatly enjoying themselves.”
“Trump’s America And Why ‘The Cruelty Is The Point'”
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1014208767
It is concerning that the ABNDP don’t seem to know what to do when it’s pretty obvious to everyone what they should do. This is part of Notley’s legacy and Nenshi must kill it and kill it with fire.
Time for a purge of the backroom — that’s where all the problems get started and flourish.
The NDP have a website about CorruptCare and are urging people to send an email to fire LaGrange.
https://www.corruptcare.ca/
I wrote to federal Health Minister Michel about this issue and never heard anything back. For those of us in the Edmonton area who are closer to Saskatchewan than B.C., does anyone know if we can cross over at Lloydminster and get the shot in SK? At a recent very sparsely attended town hall that he held for the Calgary-Peigan riding, I understand that NDP MLA David Shepherd was asked what the NDP is going to do about this situation. He replied that many people have asked him why the NDP can’t get a court injunction to shut down fascist Dani’s violation of the Canada Health Act and have a judge order her to provide free shots to everyone who wants one. Shepherd said the answer is that the NDP can do nothing about it because they are busy raising money to win the next election and they can’t afford to go to court over this. They have to make a decision on where best to channel their resources — and it’s not going to be to the vaccine issue. Isn’t Rachel Notley a lawyer? One would think she might offer to do this pro bono for her party and for the good of Albertans.