PrintMinister’s vague plan for ‘voucher’ system for Alberta surgeries should concern all Albertans: UNA president
‘This sounds more like an effort to subsidize private surgical clinics by driving business to them,’ Heather Smith says
So-called “voucher” programs are a well-known ideological strategy devised in the United States to speed the process of dismantling universal public services and they should not become part of Alberta’s health care system, warns United Nurses of Alberta President Heather Smith.
The admission by Hospital and Surgical Health Services Minister Matt Jones during Question Period yesterday in the Alberta Legislature that the province is considering using vouchers to assign surgeries should be a grave concern for Albertans, she said.
In response to a question about surgical wait times, Jones said: “We’re looking at developing a voucher program where patients who have waited longer than clinically recommended can go to any approved or accredited provider in Alberta and get that surgery.”
While Jones’s statement is extremely vague about how the program would work or with whom the Alberta government is discussing the plan, using an American-style voucher program to promote competition and profit-making in will not solve the long surgical wait times experienced by many Albertans, Smith said.
“It’s very troubling that this admission comes barely a year after the same government denied it was considering vouchers,” she added.
“This sounds more like an effort to subsidize private surgical clinics by driving business to them when improvements to public sector health services would be both more efficient and of higher quality,” she said. “Albertans need to know immediately what the government is planning and who it has been talking to about how these plans would be implemented.”
Just as the government’s encouragement of private surgical clinics has failed to solve the problem of wait times and access to surgical services, a voucher system would compromise public capacity and help establish two-tier health care in Canada without reducing wait times or saving money.
A more effective approach would be to expand the use of operating rooms now often sitting empty in Alberta public hospitals and develop a comprehensive workforce strategy for health care, Smith said.
