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Mildred Thill's avatar

This is how private health milks our system in Alberta.

Rebecca Lippiatt writes on Facebook

“Two anecdotes: my ex needed cataract surgery. He went to a private clinic (the wait time was initially horrendous, but AHS threw some money at it). When he got there, he was told if he wanted the AHS covered option, he could get one eye done now, and one in 3 months. However, if he wanted to upgrade the lenses to a fancier option, he could have both eyes done now, at the same time and it would cost $7000 for the upgraded lenses. So - the private surgical facility was perfectly able to do both eyes at the same time, but split it into two surgeries for the public, which is where most of the cost is (the act of surgery, not the price of the lenses). {Its been a while, but i think there was actually a longer wait time, and he could have or did pay an extra $6000 to get to the front of the queue. So it was 1.covered by AHS - long wait time. 2. An extra $6000, go to the front of the queue. 3. $6000+7000, but AHS paid the $6000, and he'd get the fancy lenses, and no wait time. }

Second anecdote: my cousin was having issues with her knees. Both same issue. She was sent to a privately delivered, publicly funded imaging place. They made her make two appointments. She even asked when she was there for the first one if she could get both knees imaged at the same time and they said nope - two appointments. ..... So, when Cooper or Copping or whatever his name is says the privately delivered option is 20% cheaper - I'd bet it's 20% cheaper, but do not doubt for one second that they have come up with that number to sell it to the public, but that the actual cost of the entire surgery is going to be 80% more than a publicly funded, publicly delivered option.”

#ABHealth #privatehealthcare

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Mildred Thill's avatar

I don’t think Jagmeet is lying. And I don’t think he thinks he’s lying. The conservatives truly are trying to turn this country into a mini USA.

We in Alberta have HCAP. The Health Care Action Plan which should be known as the Health Care Privatization Plan. We are on steps 1 and step 2,

as successive conservative governments have been killing public health care with the death by a thousand cuts. Step 3. will come when the election is over and we run out of oil money again.

1. Starve the public system of money, stop hiring full time help so you don’t have to pay benefits to nurses and hospital aids, Make residencies for foreign doctors next to impossible to achieve. Close beds because even though the building is there and so are the literal beds, they must stay empty because there are not enough qualified doctors, or even money to pay people to wash the floors.

2. Because of the crisis caused by step 1, bring in private clinics that somehow manage to hire doctors from other countries. Open specialty private surgeries that only take the easy surgeries, effectively skimming the cream from the system while paying public money to private investors, increasing the cost by 25 percent and poaching doctors and nurses from the public hospitals.

3. Tell the public that we, the government, just can’t pay for all this expensive health care anymore and therefore must allow the rich to pay to jump the wait list.

4. Two tiered health care.

5. American medical inequality, where only the rich can afford medical treatment and the poor die or lose their homes paying for their healthcare.

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