Health Resource Centre (HRC) is a privately-operated clinic specializing in knee and hip replacements. The clinic was on a retainer with the provincial government to provide private, yet publicly-funded, services to Albertans in order to reduce excessive wait times in this field.
But now HRC is in receivership, and the government washes its hands of it. As Wildrose Alliance leader Danielle Smith explains, HRC was told by the government that it needed to increase its capacity to handle 3,500 surgeries a year, instead of 1,000. So HRC went out and leased an expensive facility. But then the work never came, HRC was unable to pay the rent and is now facing financial ruin.
Let me say, first of all, that I am a supporter of public health care. No one should ever be forced into the poorhouse because of an illness or accident. I only wish that our federal and provincial governments finally cleaned up their acts and looked towards successful models of public health care, such as in most of Western Europe, instead of comparing our system to the American one.
Britain, too, has managed to cut wait times drastically after then-prime minister Tony Blair – to his credit – streamlined the system and allowed for publicly-funded private health care services and imposed private-sector management on the public system. Why can’t we simply copy that for starters, since it has clearly worked?
But this being Canada, it’s usually short-sightedness and stupidity that prevail. Now that Albertans are about to lose a world-class facility for knee and hip replacements, we hear the usual gripes from left-wingers who say that private health care doesn’t work. That’s true, but publicly-funded private health care does work extremely well, as the British example and many others have demonstrated. Yet, lefties keep blowing smoke in people’s eyes, deliberately trying to confound the two, very different, approaches. Most people in this country, sadly enough, aren’t smart or educated enough to see through that propaganda.
However, what worries me even more is the circumstances that have led to HRC’s current situation. Why did the government make a firm commitment to the clinic, only to withdraw it later? There are thousands languishing on waiting lists to get knees or hips replaced, often for several years, while developing even more serious conditions due to the prolonged use of heavy painkillers. Why didn’t the government refer 3,500 patients as promised to the clinic, instead of keeping them waiting even longer?
We already know quite well that Ed Stelmach’s government isn’t exactly ethical when it comes to honouring agreements or contracts (witness the oil royalties fiasco). But in this case, I think, something very nasty may have happened. Having been a Tory myself once, I know how those people think and act, and I know they can be extremely vindictive if you turn your back on them, especially now that they are losing support big time to the Wildrose Alliance.
I wouldn’t put it past them to have “suggested” to the management of HRC that they should make (substantial) contributions to the Tory party. The managers might have demurred or refused to do so, and losing the promised contract could have been the Tories’ payback for not playing along. To me, quite frankly, this is the only scenario that sort of makes sense as to why 3,500 patients suffering in pain were prevented by the Tories from getting their long-overdue procedures.
Let’s hope the insolvency proceedings can shed some light on what really transpired between the Tories and HRC, but there’s no doubt that Alberta needs a new government – personally speaking, that would be the Wildrose Alliance, which is well on its way to achieving that.