There are perhaps no two words in the English language that exemplify contradiction more than the words “government” and “efficiency.” Give the government – any government – a buck, and watch them stretch it to about 40 cents.
It’s on that premise that Albertans should be very wary about the health-care premium trial balloon that was floated during the provincial Tories annual general meeting last weekend in Red Deer. Delegates voted on a resolution to reinstate health-care premiums, which were eliminated under Premier Ed Stelmach’s government in 2008.
Why would this resolution pass? There are wait times in emergency rooms, and the only way to fix it is with more money – more money to hire more nurses, more money to hire more doctors and more money to open up more beds. Thank goodness Alberta’s Health minister has some common sense. Fred Horne said not only was he surprised by the resolution, he said money isn’t the problem.
“We’re not even sure we’ll entertain that,” Horne said. “Money in our health-care system has not really been the issue. The issue has been: how do we organize that investment to deliver the best possible value for Albertans on things like shorter waiting times, access to a family physician, those sorts of things.”
At $17.1 billion, Alberta Health eats up nearly 47 per cent of Alberta’s total budget. Horne is right, throwing more money at health care won’t solve the system’s problems. AHS has problems, and those problems are related to waste. It’s called working smarter, not harder. Unfortunately, unions sometimes make that difficult. Stories of poor time management resulting in staff being “unable” to take their scheduled break, and instead opting to tack it on at the end of the day and claim it as overtime are all too frequent. AHS executives who are shown the door because of poor performance and receive six-figure payouts is hardly a good use of taxpayers’ money.
There are problems with AHS indeed, and reintroducing health-care premiums isn’t going to solve them. Aside from AHS having more money to waste, the premiums would cost families about $1,000 per year (2008 levels).
Horne is saying the right things. The political will to fix the problems, however, does not exist. In order to truly get to the heart of the matter, the very administration of health care would have to change, and that means dealing with the unions.
Once the abuse and waste in the health-care system is minimized, Albertans might not mind being asked to pay more. But until the government deals with the inefficiencies, it has no business coming to the taxpayer with its hand out.
