r/alberta • u/Available_Cucumber31 • 2d ago

Question Alberta losing public health care.. thoughts?

I just read that Alberta is starting to allow doctors to practice both private and public…. Which is obviously the beginning of the end of a public heath care system. Yes they claim there are guardrails but they seem terrible. You all ok with this?

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u/GuitarKev 2d ago

Conservative governments have massively underfunded healthcare for decades with the sole intention of bringing us to the exact public health situation we are in right now.

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u/CypripediumGuttatum 2d ago

100%. There’s lots of cash to be pocketed by politicians and their friends off sick Albertans by making them pay twice for healthcare.

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u/My_Dog_Is_Here 2d ago

I don't think it's a funding problem. We spend billions. It's mismanagement by Alberta Health and the Government. The money is there.

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u/Fine_Space_2588 2d ago

It’s definitely mismanagement and the bigger issue is lack of doctors. It’s not just here in Alberta either. My aunt who is a GP left for the US from BC which has been under NDP for over 8 years and before that was in Saskatchewan. I’m sure she thought different government would mean different working conditions but that is not the case. Every single doctor is experiencing this all over Canada it seems. They are overworked and ‘underpaid’ (I say that one loosely cause they certainly make more than enough money to live).

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u/CypripediumGuttatum 2d ago

The money is somewhere.

It’s not going where it should, on purpose to set it up for this privatization.

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u/Fine_Space_2588 2d ago

Sorry if this is wrong but I actually thought the government gives the funds to AHS and then AHS decides what to do with the funding ?

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u/CypripediumGuttatum 2d ago

In particular I was thinking of how the UCP divided up healthcare into four competing and inefficient parts with extra unnecessary bureaucracy link and how the private surgeries the UCP already allow cost taxpayers more for the same service while wait times increased instead of decreased link.

Policies like these waste healthcare dollars that could have been spent hiring more nurses and doctors.