Time to get serious about fixing "Health Care"

     During the recent election campaign, all parties supported increased spending on "Health Care" despite the fact that such spending may have already reached unsustainable levels.  More serious even than the financial implications is the degree to which our "Health Care" system has eroded the quality of care and respect for the individual humanity of each "patient".  We are all familiar with stories of months on waiting lists, hours in emergency rooms, squalid unsanitary conditions on wards, burned out staff treating patients like annoying interruptions, and doctors consistently overbooking office visits with absurd rules such as "only one complaint per visit". 
     Despite all of this (and much more) we still hear Canadians claiming we have a marvelous system that we need to protect at all costs (literally, apparently).  It's long past time to admit, our "Health Care" system is broken and corrupt and needs to be fixed to improve patient care, health outcomes, accessibility, staff morale, and financial sustainability.  It is also past time to recognize that spending more money without significant changes in philosophy and culture is only compounding the problems.
     With this in mind, it was not encouraging to hear PM Harper's post election comments which seemed more concerned with placating the "friends of Medicare" than treating the sickness of our system.  Some suggest that somehow the recent election has empowered the West, or, alternatively, long-suffering conservatives.  I'm not optimistic that we have set the stage for meaningful reform.  I think we still have some hard campaigning to do and can expect strong push-back to efforts to administer the strong medicine needed to cure our "Health Care" system.  Rather than try and nudge our Conservative MPs toward "Health Care" reform, I think we should fight for reforms at the provincial level (which actually has the constitutional jurisdiction for health). 
     In Alberta, we have a promising alternative in the proposals of the Wildrose.  [see more here and especially here].  The Wildrose recognize the severity and scope of the problem, and that attempting to fix these problems will require courage and innovation.  I am particularly heartened by the direction of shifting power to "the patient" by, for example, having funding follow the individual rather than the current top-down, bureaucratic, politicized models.  If we accomplish meaningful reform in Alberta, it will hearten those in other provinces to follow our lead.  We should be fully prepared for resistance to our efforts from the federal "conservative" government.  However, Alberta has fought such fights before and the results have not only benefited Albertans but ultimately all Canadians as well. 
     It is a far more serious situation than even those of us concerned about it realize.  There was talk of Alberta addressing the problems about 10 years ago - even to the point of opting out of the Canada Health Act.  Unfortunately, we caved on that.  Since then we have subsidized a sick system with billions of our allegedly "dirty dollars".  Let's keep our dollars in Alberta, fix our system, and demonstrate to all Canadians what a sound, healthy and effective "Health Care" system would really look like.