Health and Wellness Minister Gene Zwozdesky speaks at an October 20 press conference.
Health and Wellness Minister Gene Zwozdesky announced October 20, that the government is accepting all 15 recommendations from the “Fred Horne health act committee” and will be introducing the Act into the Legislature very soon.
But the Minister was short on specifics on how this would actually improve services for Albertans. He did say, AND repeated at least twice, that the Health Act project was NOT about privatization of health care.
Zwozdesky appeared to be on the defensive throughout the news conference. Several points he made seemed to be attempts to undercut concerns about the proposed health act that critics like Friends of Medicare’s David Eggen have already been raising. A main one has been the threat that the act will take the legal underpinning out from under the public system by “consolidating” or changing the province’s Hospitals Act, Health Care Insurance Act, Nursing Home Act and Health Care Protection Act.
Zwozdesky said that during the health act consultation process that Albertans “told us they do not want us to consolidate the five main acts at this time”.
But changing these core laws is still in the plans. These are the acts that prohibit private health insurance, doctors from double-dipping, and a two-tier, parallel private system.
Gene Zwozdesky also tried hard to head off the criticisms that the proposed health act is only window-dressing, not actual needed improvements in services. Before he had said very much about the act, he launched into an announcement of increases in acute beds, detox beds and long-term care beds to take pressure off emergency rooms.
He said that morning there were about 155 people admitted through emergency departments in Calgary and Edmonton without a bed to go to. That’s higher than the September average, he pointed out. “We’re going in the wrong direction.”
Reporters asked if new money or extra staff would be needed to open the beds. But Zwozdesky said it’s all from the current AHS budget with beds opening today, tomorrow and next week.
Zwozdesky was really put on the hot seat by reporters over the Health Charter. Several reporters pointed out a charter would be nearly meaningless if it didn’t give people a legal recourse. “This is just really a mission statement, then,” quipped one reporter. Zwozdesky called up fellow MLA Fred Horne to help handle this question, but he too ended up wriggling uncomfortably.
Scrummed after the news conference, Friends of Medicare’s David Eggen said the government is using the Alberta Health Act “ to look like they are doing something on health care, when they actually are not.” Eggen pointed out that the province has half the hospital beds it had 15 years ago, and with a million more citizens.
Eggen also pointed that more and more privatization continues to go on in the province’s health services even though the debacle of the HRC for-profit hospital that went bankrupt in Calgary has proven very costly.
The NDP’s Rachel Notley said “Albertans want tangible improvements in services... Albertans don’t care about a new act.”
Kevin Taft, health critic for the Liberals said Albertans are starting to mark their ballots while thinking about health care and he pointed to Sherwood Park where the absence of a hospital looked like the defeating issue for the outgoing mayor.
MLA Fred Horne gave a presentation at the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta just prior to Minister Zwozdesky's announcement on the Health Act. Horne's slide shows clearly that changing the exisiting health legislation is definitely still in the plan, under Phase 2 "Update existing legislation".
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