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"Ralph Klein used to be a TV weatherman and now he’s doing the same thing — he’s snowing Albertans. Well most Albertans see through that. They know the problems with Medicare are not with delivery, but with funding. Klein himself has admitted that he has no real plan, and doesn’t even really know if private health care will save money. We of course know it will cost more and create even longer waiting lists. Calgary’s experience with private cataract clinics tells us that. What Klein doesn’t acknowledge is that once private health care is in place, it will be difficult or impossible to reverse, and there will be serious NAFTA implications for the whole country."

Christine Burdett, Provincial Chair, Friends of Medicare, Leduc, Alberta

Privatization pusher extraordinaire

It doesn’t usually get as blatant as blowing up a hospital, but those are precisely the lengths Ralph Klein is going to in his pit bull-style promotion of private health care in Alberta.

Klein is back for round three in his quest to let private hospitals operate in the public system with public funds. It was Klein’s health care funding cuts that closed beds, wards and hospitals – including the demolition of the Bow Valley Centre of the Calgary General Hospital in late 1998.

With his manufactured health care crisis up and running, Klein now uses bed shortages and longer waiting to justify allowing private hospitals to perform operations that require an overnight stay. Despite widespread opposition that has forced the premier to retreat from his private hospital

legislation in the past, a new bill is to be introduced early in 2000.

The legislation would accredit private hospitals to perform both insured and non-insured surgeries that require overnight and extended stays, and will permit public health authorities to contract with these private hospitals. Public funds will be diverted into private, for-profit health care ventures — yet no studies show the private sector can do the procedures more cost-effectively.

Another Calgary hospital was spared the dynamite, but has been handed at bargain-basement prices to a group with plans that could be as explosive for Medicare — Calgary’s Health Resources Group. The HRG, a private hospital looking to expand its market, has backing from a group with years of experience siphoning public health care dollars into the private system — private lab giant MDS.

Follow the money

Directly, and through venture capital funds it manages, MDS has invested $3 million in the start up costs of HRG's hospital, and three MDS representatives sit on the HRG board of directors. And, to close the circle, MDS, its partners and subsidiaries together are the province’s largest donor to the Alberta Tories

Together, this tight-knit group is pushing for legislative changes that jeopardize two key guarantees of the Canada Health Act. Klein’s private hospital plans threaten the principles of public administration and accessibility. While Klein reassures Albertans and Canadians that no principles of the act are actually violated, the spirit of the act is being trampled.

In addition to serious national repercussions for Medicare, Alberta’s actions have equally dangerous implications under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Canada negotiated a NAFTA ‘carve out’ protecting health care. If the HRG and Klein get their way, that protection would no longer apply, leaving health care open to NAFTA provisions allowing American corporations to enter the Canadian market.