Health care is not a commodity to be auctioned off to the highest bidder
Wildrose says competition and patient choice are keys to success - but the experience with these is clear, and the Wildrose position is easily refutable.
Competition in health care drives costs up and quality down—imagine every hospital competing to provide cancer treatment, or heart surgery, or a burn unit, or whatever. The result is huge duplication and enormous costs, and a lot of pressure to provide unnecessary services. One of the strengths of a coordinated public system is that one hospital, like the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton, can have a great obstetrics department, while the University of Alberta Hospital concentrates on cardiology, etc etc. Concentrated, specialized services are the way to go, not competition. There is good evidence on this—look at my book Clear Answers if you want examples.
As for patient choice, the whole dynamic of the patient-doctor relationship is one of trust, not of salesmanship. If you think you may have cancer, or are injured in a car crash, or have a heart condition, you aren’t interested in choice as much as you are interested in a system that puts your welfare first. Most often, the patient wants to turn choice over to their doctor, as reflected in the classic question: “Doc, what would you do?” Choosing among medical treatments is not like choosing between Chevrolet and Ford, or between a Big Mac and a Whopper.
Many people have tried comparing privatizing health care to privatizing ALCB retail and to highway maintenance. The Wildrose position is closer to electricity deregulation. Despite all the rah-rah from investors and selected voices in industry, electricity deregulation in most Albertan’s eyes is not a success. It was sold with the promise of three things: better service, more choice, and lower prices. Ask Albertans if they think service from their utility is better than it used to be? Of if they like the choices they have in electricity retail? Or if they really think the prices are better after they now pay all those fees and rate riders?
When it comes to health care, Wildrose has the wrong diagnosis and the wrong treatment. The diagnosis is not that public health care is the problem, the diagnosis is 15 years of bad management and wild swings in funding. The treatment is not to throw out public health care, it is to restore competent management through the kind of reforms we have proposed.
Kevin Taft
Alberta Liberal MLA for Edmonton-Riverview