runsmoothBraid: UCP performing major surgery on Alberta health care
Braid acknowledges that the UCP’s changes to Healthcare are monumental, and then goes on to explore some of the merits.
I’d say one does not explore a discussion of the merits because the UCP do not even have the mandate for these changes. Nenshi correctly challenged the UCP to call the election on the issue. I’ll point out as of right now the unions’ Operation Total Recall has now covered 9 UCP MLAs for recall petitions, and another 6 more are confirmed by Elections Alberta for signature collection.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/mla-elections-alberta-ucp-recall-petitions-9.6990490
I take this whole issue as a UCP smash and grab. There’s nothing sexy about a centralized Healthcare system that reviews itself and runs self-reporting corporate audits. As Braid says, the Healthcare portfolio is worth $76.9 Bln, and the UCP just sees that as a dollar figure that can go into their own coffers. For example, look at “Alberta government undermined health authority to push lab privatization deal, A-G report finds”, by Matthew Scace. The Auditor General highlighted the Dynalife boondoggle,
Between 2019 and 2023, the Alberta government paid a combined $109-million to set up the system and eventually kill the deal.
The article goes on to describe how all the usual processes were not followed to achieve the Dynalife outcome:
“In some cases, it was unclear to us who was actually making the decision,” he said. “There was, in certain instances, a lack of documentation of meetings that were held between the minister, department executives, AHS executives.”
Mr. Wylie wrote there were “persistent issues” in governance and oversight throughout the procurement process. Neither AHS nor Alberta’s health department followed their processes to prepare a business case for outsourcing lab services, he wrote, and AHS continued with procurement “despite knowing that the main objective of cost savings was likely unattainable.”
This ain’t about better Healthcare outcomes - it’s about how much the UCP Robber Barons can get away with.
This is a stick up.
