Since the Alberta government has the power to outlaw fees like those about to be charged by a Calgary medical clinic for patients to get timely access to their physician, it’ll have to exercise it if Premier Danielle Smith wants anyone to believe her election claim no Albertan would ever
Continue readingTag: Canada Health Act
Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jenna Cartusciello examines the connections between COVID-19 and gastrointestinal issues as yet another poorly-studied and potentially long-lasting effect of infection with a disease we’re being told not to worry about. And Omar Mosleh reports on the backsliding in Canadian public health as diseases
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Impasse: Ottawa unlikely to fork over billions to make health care better if Conservative premiers insist on using the cash to make it worse
What did Alberta Premier Danielle Smith mean Tuesday in Calgary when she said of her plans for health care that “we’re just going to keep on making … incremental changes; I can’t stop doing reform because the federal government doesn’t want to partner with us”? Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Premier Jason Kenney, in isolation, blows off criticism of the lackadaisical UCP approach to COVID-19 restrictions as ‘political pressure’
It’s not very reassuring to learn Alberta Premier Jason Kenney treats calls for stricter measures to control resurgent COVID-19 infections as “political pressure.” But yesterday, after Alberta on Wednesday surpassed 400 new cases in a single day for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began, Mr. Kenney did just
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP launches ambitious legislative session, with 20 bills packed into six weeks and no time for COVID-19
An ambitious six-week fall sitting of the Alberta Legislature commenced in Edmonton yesterday with Premier Jason Kenney telling the House during Question Period that his government isn’t about to publish any updated COVID-19 modelling. As Opposition Leader Rachel Notley argued, it would be useful to know what the experts say
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Coronavirus has U.S. physicians eyeing politics — will COVID-19 and the UCP’s War on Doctors spur the same thing here?
The New York Times reported yesterday how the coronavirus crisis is prodding a wave of mostly progressive American physicians to enter politics. Many are women and most have connected the dots between the United States’ appalling Third World health care system and the disastrous rate of COVID-19 infection and death
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What’s with the United Conservative Party’s emerging fury at nurses, of all people?
What’s with the sudden hate on for nurses by United Conservative Party supporters? It comes from somewhere. Your average UCP internet troll doesn’t just come up with this stuff on his – or occasionally her – own. The traditional Conservative approach to attacking nurses and other predominantly public and female
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Groundhog Day on Black Friday! With 5,000 job cuts planned, perpetual chaos returns to health care in Alberta
With yesterday’s announcement the Alberta Government intends to wipe out close to 5,000 jobs in public health care by 2023, and another 2,500 or so in other parts of the public service, perpetual chaos has returned to health care in Alberta. Get used to it. It won’t be getting better
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP’s Friday Morning Massacre purges NDP appointees from Alberta’s boards, agencies and commissions
You almost have to admire Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government for the thoroughness of its sudden purge of NDP appointees to government agencies, boards and commissions yesterday. The Friday Morning Massacre began with news the UCP was clearing out NDP appointments on the boards of 10 post-secondary institutions and the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Lack of information and weak enforcement let private health care clinics fudge public-private health-care line
PHOTO: Parkland Institute researcher Dr. Rebecca Graff-McRae. Below: The cover of the Parkland Institute Report, Blurred Lines, Private Membership Clinics and Public Health Care. It doesn’t exactly come as a surprise that so-called “private membership health care clinics” in Alberta have been fudging the line between public and private health
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Nina Shapiro comments on the price of privatizing public goods. And George Monbiot weighs in on how the Grenfell Tower fire confirms that what corporatist politicians deride as “red tape” is in fact vital protection for people: For years successive governments have
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – The Star offers some lessons from the UK’s election, including the powerful appeal of unabashed social democratic policy. Aditya Chakrabortty discusses how Jeremy Corbyn has changed his country’s politics for a long time to come. And Gary Younge observes that the gains achieved
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – David MacDonald discusses the need to start tackling some of Canada’s most expensive and least justifiable tax handouts to the rich: The richest 10 per cent of Canadians enjoy an average of $20,500 a year in tax exemptions, credits, and other loopholes.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the Libs’ pleasantly surprising hints toward enforcing the Canada Health Act – and the Saskatchewan Party’s response that it would rather fight for profit-motivated medicine than work on building a sustainable universal system. For further reading…– By way of background on the enforcement of the Canada Health Act
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Sherri Torjman discusses how the the gig economy is based mostly on evading protections for workers – and how the both employment law and social programs need to catch up:Much of the labour market is morphing in…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Caroline Plante reports on Quebec’s scourge of medical extra-billing and user fees (as identified by its own Auditor General). And Aaron Derfel notes that the federal government has done nothing to app…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week.- CBC and the Star have both started reporting on the Panama Papers – offering a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg of international tax avoidance. And the Star also recognizes why we shouldn’t let grey-area tax…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Ryan Meili writes that the spread of for-profit corporate medicine – including through the Saskatchewan Party’s privatization of care – demonstrates the need for enforcement of the Canada Health Act. And the Star mak…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Linda Tirado writes that whatever the language used as an excuse for turning public benefits into private profits, we should know better than to consider it credible:Given how much I had heard my whole life abo…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom takes a broad look at the problems with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, while noting that the Trudeau Libs don’t seem inclined to address them at all. Deirdre Fulton sees the final text as being worse than anybody suspected based even on the
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