In Alberta and across Canada it is the biggest line item on the budget, the most contested area of government debate and the No. 1 issue for voters.
With nearly $16 billion in spending and representing about 40 per cent of the government’s budget, health care has dominated this election as it has in previous ones. Despite those numbers, Liberal candidate Kim Bugeaud said focusing on the cost is missing the larger picture.
“The rhetoric has been that we are spending too much on health care and there are a lot of myths that it is escalating out of control.”
She said the system has to be about the patients and their experiences.
“Everybody knows somebody really well whose health has been impacted by the system.”
The Liberal solution to the system is to invest $800 million in homecare, allowing more patients to be treated at home.
“The Liberals are looking at doubling the budget for homecare right off the bat,” she said. “Which ends up keeping people stronger, healthier, safer in their homes.”
The Grit plan also calls for more long-term care beds, which Bugeaud, a social worker who has worked in hospitals, said along with more homecare would keep people out of more expensive hospital beds, allowing the emergency room system to work as it was intended.
“You start moving people through the hospital more efficiently and with better homecare and with better outcomes.”
NDP candidate Nicole Bownes said her party would focus on seniors and getting them the care that is appropriate to their needs.
Her party plans a big investment in both homecare and long-term care beds as well. Bownes, who works as a homecare nurse herself, said getting seniors the appropriate resources would take the strain off of the rest of the system.
“You have the elderly in the emergencies because they have reached a crisis,” she said. “If we could address that problem, the emergency rooms would be unburdened.”
PC candidate Steve Khan said health care has absolutely been the dominating issue of the election.
“It is the No. 1 thing we talk about at the doors.”
Khan said once inside the system, Albertans are well cared for, but the challenge they face is getting that far.
“The biggest issue that we have is access, we have too long wait times.”
Khan said his party has plans to build more continuing care spaces over the next few years to relieve the current burden on the system.
“Part of our plan is going to address that we are going to add another 1,000 continuing care spaces over the next five years.”
Khan said those spaces will move patients out of acute-care beds in hospitals, freeing up resources. In addition to freeing up beds, Khan said his party hopes to stem the tide of people coming into emergency rooms with the proposed family care clinics.
Those clinics, staffed with nurse practitioners and other medical staff, would be open evenings and are aimed at taking the strain off of emergency rooms.
“What we are addressing are those people who have no other way to go.”
Alberta party candidate Tim Osborne doesn’t have any immediate solutions for health care. He said his party believes you have to ask the right questions of the right people first.
“The front-line workers have all sorts of answers,” he said. “I don’t think their voices have been heard, people under our current government feel intimidated.”
Osborne said one area that is clear is that the system lacks mental health capacity and needs more long term care, two areas that create backlogs.
He also said his party would try to do more to encourage Albertans to live healthier lives and thus stay out of the health-care system in the first place.
“We need to do a better job of keeping people out of the system.”
Wildrose candidate James Burrows said his party’s first move would be to dismantle Alberta Health Services, which he argued has wasted health-care dollars on bureaucracy.
“We believe the No. 1 issue is the health super board, the government continues to mismanage our health-care system.”
He said the party’s position is fundamentally about choice. Their proposal would allow Albertans to travel elsewhere to get treatment for several surgical procedures if the wait times in Alberta were longer than medical standards advised.
He said the system is in place in parts of Europe where it works well.
“If there are best practices we can use from other nations, why should we not be looking at that.”
Under the proposal Alberta would pay for the procedure elsewhere, but only at the cost Alberta pays for the procedure in the province. Any expenses above and beyond what Alberta pays would not be covered
“We believe in Alberta that Albertans want choice,” said Burrows while making clear that the proposal is not a move towards private health care. “We want to commit to the public health-care system, we want to uphold the Canada Health Act.”
