Great article on Alberta "Health Care" by Kevin Libin

     Today's National Post (p. A8) included an insightful article by Kevin Libin about Alberta's failing "Health Care" system.  While the article gives a lot of attention to the recent revelations about queue-jumping by political insiders, and leans a bit too hard on the "corrupt Alberta P.C.'s" angle; a thoughtful reading confirms some of the basic symptoms of our "Health Care" malaise. It also further justifies my comment years ago, in Vermilion, to then Health Care Minister Gary Mar, that we had a Soviet Style health care system.  Mr. Mar dismissed my comment as a bizarre bleep from an awkward non-entity.  However, Libin's article highlights that, just as in the "egalitarian" Soviet Union, while peasants and workers were queueing for hours to access poor quality, superciliously delivered food staples, Communist party insiders had special access at the GUM department store where they could promptly obtain high quality and exotic items, in special venues reserved for them.  All the while, these same Soviet officials touted the myth that everyone in the Soviet Union was an equal "comrade".      Now, to me, the parallels between this Soviet reality, and the current state of Canadian "Health Care" are striking.  So, the problem is not that somehow we have some corrupt, or arrogant, or incompetent politicians, or bureaucrats.  The problem is that we have politicized health care and removed the patient from any control over the quality or the attitude with which health care is delivered.  We wouldn't put up with the quality of "customer service" in any other aspect of our lives.  We know that many people will play the system to their advantage if they can so it is not just that we have "tory insiders" it is that when you have a politically driven system, it guarantees that insiders will acquire more power and use it to their own advantage.  We need to move to end the state controlled monopoly which enforces long queues and low quality for the masses and invites political insiders to abuse their power.
     Another encouraging comment in Libin's article is that more and more Albertans are becoming aware of the disconnect between the propaganda claims that "we have the world's greatest "Health Care" system [just look at the billions we spend on it]" and the reality of unsustainable costs, continually deteriorating quality, and appalling attitudes of many burned out health care professionals.  One hopes that we do not have to wait for every Canadian to experience first hand the horrors of emergency room waits, unsanitary hospital wards, or bored arrogance from doctors, before we realize that revolutionary changes are needed.  It took a long time in the Soviet Union but eventually the disconnect between the myth spun my Communist party officials compared to the reality experienced by long suffering ordinary "comrades" was just too great to be sustained.  The iron curtain fell.  Hopefully, Canadian "Health Care" will soon follow.