Anyone who lived through the horror that was Ralph Klein's years already knows that the Alberta NeoCon$ will use Health Care as the whipping boy for all of their difficulties balancing the books. Never mind that it's one of the most valuable public services Canada - and in particular Alberta has.
For those not thinking that it works to our advantage, consider that health insurance premiums south of the border can easily approach 100% of a middle income earner's salary. When employers have to foot that bill, suddenly the cost per employee goes skyrocketing over the salary plus payroll taxes and lease space.
Calgary has seen the brunt of the Klein-era cutbacks, and has only recently been starting to recover from the damage that slash-and-burn funding did to health care in our city.
Now, we see the parsimonious bunch of twits in Edmonton going after Health Care - after prostituting themselves to big oil in recent weeks.
According to the AHS's website, the unfunded units include transplant, lab, mental health, emergency and hemodialysis services.
I see. So, a health care system that is already starved for space for emergency care, and has never even come close to adequate space for serious acute mental health issues (ever since they went to "in community care" sometime in the late 1980s) is about to be constrained even further. I don't doubt that hemodialysis is similarly shorted on available service times.
Stelmach once again shows us that like his predecessor, he's all about big oil money, and not so much big on doing things for the people who live in this province. I can hardly wait to see what will be visited upon the citizens of Alberta when the budget is unveiled.
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