Guest editorial
Let's say you're a homeowner and your roof is leaking. When it stops raining, you go up on the roof with a tar brush and patch the hole. Problem solved. However, a couple of days later, it starts raining again. This time, you have three separate leaks on your roof. When it stops raining, you again patch the holes. Problem solved.
A few days later, it rains again, and this time you have eight different leaks on your roof. After a few choice words, you realize there's a pattern developing. Instead of wasting your time and money futilely patching holes, you realize you need to replace your roof.
Alberta Health Services has a smattering of leaks in its roof. In fact, it's so porous you can see daylight through it. Yet, the Alberta government keeps insisting on going up on the roof and patching the holes. Their tar brush, in this case, is the decision to rapidly hire 300 registered nurses. That should fix the problem — until it rains again.
When will this provincial government stop reacting to our health care woes and tackle the fundamental problems that plague the system? Are 300 nurses, spread out over 100 hospitals across the province, going to reduce emergency room wait times? Are 300 nurses going to solve the doctor shortage in this province? Are 300 nurses going to reduce the gobs of money wasted in a bloated system that people openly abuse?
Former health minister Ron Liepert had it right when he talked about undertaking an extensive review of Alberta's health care system. He showed leadership by trying to get through all of the posturing and political gamesmanship to the root of what ails health care in this province. He realized health care was broken and throwing more money at it wasn't the solution.
But a cabinet shuffle prevailed and Gene Zwozdesky took over. The Liepert review has mysteriously disappeared and what we are left with is a minister who reacts to every crisis and repudiates Raj Sherman and others in the health care industry who dare criticize the system.
There will never be enough funding if we don't find a way to change the health care model itself. Many European countries, along with the Japanese and Australians, use a blended public and private model and, as a result, have a health care system rated much better than Canada's. Unfortunately, the public sector unions, their political counterparts and a largely sympathetic media have had control over the public versus private health care debate for decades in this country. The concept of private or two-tiered health care is branded as evil — only the rich will be able to afford it and the rest will be left in the cold. If our government continues to throw money at health care, either the resulting tax increases will reach suffocating levels or the massive debt will choke us.
The hiring of 300 nurses might be just what the system needs now, but it will rain again and you can be sure the Alberta government will be up on that roof patching more holes. Only when our government addresses the fundamental flaws in the public-only system will we ever have a chance at providing effective health care to all at a price we can all afford.
- St. Albert Gazette
