King Ralph and Health Care Reform

I've been musing for a couple of days about Alberta's Health Care Policy Framework.

Philosophically, I don't like a lot of what I see, and will no doubt spend a fair bit of time in the coming days dissecting the policy direction and the likely impact - it's going to take me some digging to put my arguments together - largely because I'm going to have to do some research on what happened in Thatcher-era UK and more recently New Zealand to substantiate some of my suspicions. (or, possibly invalidate them - we'll see)

What grabbed my attention was Ralph's lovely little temper tantrum in the Legislature yesterday. We've known for years that Ralph has a thin skin, and doesn't especially like to be sitting in the legislature - especially during question period. After claiming to want to hear what Albertans think, what the hell did he expect?

The opposition Liberal Party sent across the floor a copy of Their Health Policy Plan - which last I looked did a far better job of reflecting the results of last springs Symposium on health care policy. (Which RalphCo seems to have blithely ignored in their plans.

Me - I'd love to get my grubby little paws on the donor lists for Ralph & party for the last fifteen years. I have sneaking suspicions that parts of that list read like a "who's who" of big dollar medicine in the United States. Why do I say this? First, Ralph has been on the Health Care line for a long time, and he keeps trying to come up with something every couple of years. I suspect that there's a few "debts" to be paid before he retires.

Right now, Ralph is in the perfect place to do what the heck he pleases - he has an overwhelming majority, a Conservative government in Ottawa and a $10bn budget surplus this year. Even if the Federal Gov't was to decide to cut the transfer payments for Health Care, Ralph couldn't care less.