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AB Premier reveals plans to transfer hospitals from AHS

SeaKingTacco said:
It doesn’t read like privatization, to me.
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Cynical take: yet - wait for it.

Less cynical take: given non-profit alternatives already available and doing the job, not a worry right now.
SeaKingTacco said:
... Catholic Health Services are not for profit and they have operated in the health care space for decades.
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Covenant Health apparently reports to the Bishops of Alberta, so it would be a non-profit like a LOT of religious-run non-profit health care across Canada.

Where I live, the Catholic system runs what used to be called chronic complex care (lots more help needed than nursing home/long term care), inpatient rehab, addictions, hospice and mental health services. Years ago, they were known for being able to run facilities cheaper than broader public sector ones by juggling the staffing ratios to increase the number of lower-cost very-frontmost-line staff and reduce the number of higher-cost RN-level staff.

While not always perfect (like any human-run organization - our local Catholic provider needed to be put under third-party management for a while and is now back on its own), it's a lot less contentious than for-profit alternatives.
SeaKingTacco said:
AHS is getting a warning shot across the bow.
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And not just with a .22, for sure.
 
SeaKingTacco said:
People hold up public healthcare as some mythical talisman.

Is anyone, anywhere in Canada really happy with their public healthcare system?

I not saying to sell the whole thing to Merck.

I would like to see some experimentation in this space.
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I've never had a bad experience with the MB healthcare system, however I know the horror stories exist. Here there are private operators (mostly the Catholic Church with our second largest hospital St Boniface and a smaller local hospital, the Misericordia) but they're funded by the government and its kinda like a weird mixed system. Seems to work here in middle of the road MB, St B is one of the best hospitals in the West and Misericordia is positioning itself to be the premier eye centre in Canada. Part of that seems to stem from a modicum of independence from the central health authority.

All that said, the American system is objectively shittier for the average person so that's probably not a good model to follow either. Balance in all things.
 
Honestly the Alberta health care system is a mess so anything they can do to make it better is worth a try.
 
Remius said:
Honestly the Alberta health care system is a mess so anything they can do to make it better is worth a try.
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What happened? It seems kinda like a blink and you miss it collapse, however it's not like I was paying too much attention a couple provinces away. You'd like being the richest per capita province in the country the healthcare system would reflect that.
 
A couple more examples: St Paul's and Mount Saint Joseph in Vancouver are run by Providence Health Care.
 
Remius said:
Honestly the Alberta health care system is a mess so anything they can do to make it better is worth a try.
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The Alberta system has been slowly dismantling over the years, but I'll take the current Alberta system over whatever they have disguised as healthcare in Quebec currently.
 
MJP said:
The Alberta system has been slowly dismantling over the years, but I'll take the current Alberta system over whatever they have disguised as healthcare in Quebec currently.
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There is a reason so many west Quebec residents come here to Ottawa for healthcare. Not that Ontario is doing anything better than anyone else.
 
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PrairieFella said:
I've never had a bad experience with the MB healthcare system, however I know the horror stories exist. Here there are private operators (mostly the Catholic Church with our second largest hospital St Boniface and a smaller local hospital, the Misericordia) but they're funded by the government and its kinda like a weird mixed system. Seems to work here in middle of the road MB, St B is one of the best hospitals in the West and Misericordia is positioning itself to be the premier eye centre in Canada. Part of that seems to stem from a modicum of independence from the central health authority.
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I was at the Misericordia (aka The miz) for cataract surgery recently. Pretty good place.
 
PrairieFella said:
It's showing its age but if the Miz can get their plan off the ground, it'll be an amazing asset for Western Canada. I think they're still raising funds for the redevelopment plan. I'll link it for anyone interested.

misericordia.mb.ca

2022-26 Strategic Plan - Misericordia Health Centre

misericordia.mb.ca misericordia.mb.ca
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it seems that all health services believe in the bigger is better notion. In Ontario almost all of the smaller hospitals have been shut down and all services moved to centralized locations which may or may not be close at hand. Your family doctor has been replaced by a clinic. Our closest hospital is 25 minutes away if you are in a hurry. If it wasn't for the heroics of the 911 crowd the death rate would be significantly higher
 
YZT580 said:
it seems that all health services believe in the bigger is better notion. In Ontario almost all of the smaller hospitals have been shut down and all services moved to centralized locations which may or may not be close at hand. Your family doctor has been replaced by a clinic. Our closest hospital is 25 minutes away if you are in a hurry. If it wasn't for the heroics of the 911 crowd the death rate would be significantly higher
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I tend to agree that that is a negative however Winnipeg was a weird one since it had a ton of hospitals from the times of pre-unicity, the neighbourhood hospitals used to the the hospital of an independent city. In a city that takes 45 mins to drive from the extreme East to extreme West in normal traffic, we probably didn't need 7 emergs. For example, the Miz doesn't need to be an emerg because it's a mile from HSC and less than 2 miles from St. B, both national class tertiary hospitals.
 
Remius said:
There is a reason so many west Quebec residents come here to Ottawa for healthcare. Not that Ontario is doing anything better than anyone else.
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Every province is screwed and has been since federal health transfers have decreased in a relative to service manner over successive federal governments. Everyone likes to slag their own province, but in partial defence to Qc, if I’m not happy with the wait for Ont provided imaging, I can hop the Interprovincial Bridge to Gatineau and grab a $700 MRI/CT scan and bring it back to my family doctor. To be honest, I haven’t checked what a cash imaging session in Ottawa is, so maybe the same exists here?

There’s a wide variance across the country for anything from ambulance charges to some provinces charging patients for things like surgery cleaning and bandaging supplies (family friend in BC had to pay up front for all the savlon, bandaging and gauze for liver cancer tumor removal! That’s whacked TBH, and part of why my wife and I aren’t in such a hurry to retire fully in BC from Ontario.

As the federal and respective provincial budgets continue to proportionately reduce budgets relative to the level of service demand, in order to service the myriad of other services that citizens/residents have either come to expect, or politicians have told them they need to have, we’ll see continued pressure on health services to cope by whatever means possible.

Canada’s pan-nationally inconsistent healthcare system is strained to levels of critical vulnerability unlike any time before, and the mythical unicorn of its superiority relative to other nations is well back into the back 40, dead and rotting behind the barn…
 
SeaKingTacco said:
People hold up public healthcare as some mythical talisman.

Is anyone, anywhere in Canada really happy with their public healthcare system?

I not saying to sell the whole thing to Merck.

I would like to see some experimentation in this space.
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Agreed, I would like the option for my dependents to use private health care, and myself when I am back on civi street.
 
Halifax Tar said:
Agreed, I would like the option for my dependents to use private health care, and myself when I am back on civi street.
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I think the issue is that once we have the public/private healthcare system, and the private side pays their folks more $, then naturally more healthcare specialists will go to those private companies rather than the current public hospitals, etc. So eventually, unless there is a way to gatekeep how many go private or the govt pays more (which I’m sure will happen), it will essentially become private healthcare.

This isn’t necessarily a case of “let it fail”, because if it fails then we’re talking about healthcare. You and I may be able to afford private healthcare, but how about those making less than us? If they get subsidized then we’re just doing a half-job of public healthcare.

Because I work with so many Americans and see their system (Tricare aside), I have a different opinion of public, private, and dual healthcare. It is definitely possible to get better service in the US because it’s run like a business, and if you don’t want to go to clinic A, you go to clinic B.

However, when I ask how much they pay for co-Pay, health insurance, and still have to select their clinics or hospitals based on what place takes which insurance (they default to “use the military hospital if at all possible” due to a myriad of reasons), it gives me pause.
 
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