Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Just to add, I'm super tired of all of this messaging in Alberta (and most other places as well) these days.
"We need to fight Ottawa"
"We need to fight to get our province back"
"We need to fight, fight, fight"

NO WE DON'T
We need to work with the people and governments around us to find the best possible solution for ourselves.
You want to fight Ottawa? Great, you're gonna lose.
Wait...let me just check Jason Kenney's track record on fighting Ottawa, just to be sure...hmmmm, looks like a big old O-fer...

Enough with this "Fight" BS.
Work together. Find good, novel solutions to problems, and help each other out along the way.

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by KootenayFlamesFan

I love the boogeyman of getting your freedoms back, while living in one of the top 5 most free countries in the world. A lot of people fall for that stuff, too. 'Common sense' education is a funny one, too.

"God given" groan. Keep your God's out of it, please

Getting your freedoms back. Yup, unless you're coloured or homosexual

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

Dude, what I'm saying is that creating an openly hostile environment, and openly antagonizing the actual workers at AHS (doctors, nurses, etc), is a horrible way to affect any meaningful and/or positive change.
Kenney was doing the same thing, which made things worse, and now Danielle Smith is ratcheting it up to 10, and she thinks somehow that'll bring about positive change. How does that help things?
She's doubling down on a completely stupid strategy because she has an ax to grind.

I'm not both sides-ing anything. Except for a 3 year span, there's only been 1 side that has had any say in the situation, and they, under Danielle Smith, seem determined to make things worse.

The plan is obvious and simple.
1. Cripple public health
2. Offer private health as a solution
3. Record profits for insurance companies.

[Fuzz]

God didn't give us any freedoms. He's actually known for having many rules.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by btimbit

"God given" groan. Keep your God's out of it, please

Getting your freedoms back. Yup, unless you're coloured or homosexual

They want their god given freedoms to be able to discriminate against others, of course.

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

The plan is obvious and simple.
1. Cripple public health
2. Offer private health as a solution
3. Record profits for insurance companies.

Yup, it's been the script since election day, many of us have called it out from the start, and that script has been followed perfectly ever since, despite the giant pandemic in the middle of it.


I won't claim AHS is perfect, but their issues are mostly from bloated bureaucracy and admin. So the solution is to.... attack doctors and nurses? Get real. And I've given enough rants on EMS lately, we don't need to go there again. Sure hope I get to see my wife sometime soon, she's working on her day off again

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

They want their god given freedoms to be able to discriminate against others, of course.

Exactly. OUR Freedom, not theirs

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

Dude, what I'm saying is that creating an openly hostile environment, and openly antagonizing the actual workers at AHS (doctors, nurses, etc), is a horrible way to affect any meaningful and/or positive change.
Kenney was doing the same thing, which made things worse, and now Danielle Smith is ratcheting it up to 10, and she thinks somehow that'll bring about positive change. How does that help things?
She's doubling down on a completely stupid strategy because she has an ax to grind.

I'm not both sides-ing anything. Except for a 3 year span, there's only been 1 side that has had any say in the situation, and they, under Danielle Smith, seem determined to make things worse.

Okay, I will definitely agree with that. I dont see what that is supposed to accomplish.

And further...if someone gets into Politics because they have an axe to grind they should be immediately disqualified.

No public money for private vendettas.

But AHS needs some serious reform, we all know this, its not a secret.

What is also not a secret is that Danielle Smith is 200% not the person who should be in charge of it. That lady's brain is like a bag of cats.

[Muta]

I am totally a fan of Danielle Smith and her merry band of freedom fighters funding and developing some anti-vax wings in our current hospitals. This will alleviate overloaded ERs by allowing those who prefer to be treated by science in one stream, and those that prefer anything-but-science methods in the other stream.

We can use O+G revenue to pay for the new renovations, they can call the new wings "Contemporary Therapeutics", and they can promote innovative treatments like Invermectin and patient shaming as leading-edge prescriptions. You could even build these new wings next to the morgues in order to maximize operational efficiencies within the facility, saving time and money for taxpayers.

[Yikes]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

The plan is obvious and simple.
1. Cripple public health
2. Offer private health as a solution
3. Record profits for insurance companies.

So you are saying cripple the AHS beyond repair with stealth and under the dark of night so that the only choice is private medical care? In Canada? Yeah right.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

Just to add, I'm super tired of all of this messaging in Alberta (and most other places as well) these days.
"We need to fight Ottawa"
"We need to fight to get our province back"
"We need to fight, fight, fight"

NO WE DON'T
We need to work with the people and governments around us to find the best possible solution for ourselves.
You want to fight Ottawa? Great, you're gonna lose.
Wait...let me just check Jason Kenney's track record on fighting Ottawa, just to be sure...hmmmm, looks like a big old O-fer...

Enough with this "Fight" BS.
Work together. Find good, novel solutions to problems, and help each other out along the way.

And for the Love of God....Canada has to stop acting like a bunch of bratty, entitled, squabbling siblings.

Work together you goddamned idiots! FFS we're supposed to be on the same goddamned team here!!

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Yikes

So you are saying cripple the AHS beyond repair with stealth and under the dark of night so that the only choice is private medical care? In Canada? Yeah right.

Dark night? this has been happening over the last three years in broad daylight.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Then fix the bureaucracy and logjams, but nothing about pissing off practitioners and nurses is fixing that.

Oh, I agree for sure. But it seems like this turns into the same kind of discussion we see when it comes to services like policing. You want to restructure and try to improve things and right away it turns into "X" number of police officers off the streets and how can we keep people safe?!

This happens with health care as well. As soon as you bring up the idea of restructuring and reallocation of resources it's a war with frontline staff, two-tiered healthcare and all the usual suspects.

I won't go into details here, but my mom has been in the hospital for the past month or so. Watching this process playout and how things are handled is just plainly ridiculous. It's not a business (and nor should it be, for the record!), but if it were, there would be things that would happen just because it's sensible and would save that business a bunch of money. Instead, the way the system works now, it's just plain expensive and inefficient. With all the boomers aging, these issues are only going to get worse. We have to do something to fix these problems and try to reform this. But, to make this happen someone is going to have to spend a lot of political capital and ruffle a lot of feathers on the way.

And to be entirely clear and forthright, in "my" situation, the issue is not frontline staff. They've been great and there's no issue there. It's the system and the way it "functions". I'm pretty much convinced that if you ran a commission and asked these folks on the frontlines what could work better and how we could streamline things, they'd have the answers. I'm not entirely sure that some of the people higher up the food chain would want to hear it though.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

The plan is obvious and simple.
1. Cripple public health
2. Offer private health as a solution
3. Record profits for insurance companies.

Yep, the plan is likely to choke the public healthcare system into submission (on purpose) and use that as an excuse to significantly privatize services, saying "see? The system was failing and it needed to be changed". This falls in line with Smith's desire to deliver services privately, give Albertans a GENEROUS $300 for healthcare needs, and allow people to spend that on pseudo-science and alternative medicines like naturopathy and voodoo curses.

Her "open for business" diatribes is very much directed at insurance companies.

This will also no doubt impact staffing at hospitals, clinics and facilities. I am sure she's going to be "there's plenty of doctors from around the world that want to join us", just as Ralph Klein did in the 90s.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Slava

Oh, I agree for sure. But it seems like this turns into the same kind of discussion we see when it comes to services like policing. You want to restructure and try to improve things and right away it turns into "X" number of police officers off the streets and how can we keep people safe?!

This happens with health care as well. As soon as you bring up the idea of restructuring and reallocation of resources it's a war with frontline staff, two-tiered healthcare and all the usual suspects.

I won't go into details here, but my mom has been in the hospital for the past month or so. Watching this process playout and how things are handled is just plainly ridiculous. It's not a business (and nor should it be, for the record!), but if it were, there would be things that would happen just because it's sensible and would save that business a bunch of money. Instead, the way the system works now, it's just plain expensive and inefficient. With all the boomers aging, these issues are only going to get worse. We have to do something to fix these problems and try to reform this. But, to make this happen someone is going to have to spend a lot of political capital and ruffle a lot of feathers on the way.

And to be entirely clear and forthright, in "my" situation, the issue is not frontline staff. They've been great and there's no issue there. It's the system and the way it "functions". I'm pretty much convinced that if you ran a commission and asked these folks on the frontlines what could work better and how we could streamline things, they'd have the answers. I'm not entirely sure that some of the people higher up the food chain would want to hear it though.

You'd be surprised. I've directly dealt with family members in American hospitals and the administration and inefficiency is just as ridiculous as Canadian ones, but in different ways. Whatever streamlining that a profit motive creates is eaten up several times over by the red tape involved in for-profit care. I remember walking into the billing department of a larger hospital in California and amount of people in there whose sole job it was to handle billing and payments was insane.

The hospital was quite nice, but it also cost my family member's insurer about $50K for 3 nights in a relatively normal room and a few tests. There's no real push for efficiency in that kind of system either because of how much they can get away with billing.

[Yikes]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

Dark night? this has been happening over the last three years in broad daylight.

True, and I stand corrected. BUT not to the extent that the AHS is dead...not even close. It's my belief that in Canada, any serious attempt to take a run at universal heath care is political suicide. You can pick away at this and that to make your base and political buddies happy but in the end universal health care is going nowhere.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Yikes

True, and I stand corrected. BUT not to the extent that the AHS is dead...not even close. It's my belief that in Canada, any serious attempt to take a run at universal heath care is political suicide. You can pick away at this and that to make your base and political buddies happy but in the end universal health care is going nowhere.

I hope that you're right.

If I were into conspiracies I would suggest that pushing against Ottawa to increase provincial powers would be a crucial step to eliminating universal healthcare. That said, I do think both are political grandstanding.

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by Slava

Oh, I agree for sure. But it seems like this turns into the same kind of discussion we see when it comes to services like policing. You want to restructure and try to improve things and right away it turns into "X" number of police officers off the streets and how can we keep people safe?!

This happens with health care as well. As soon as you bring up the idea of restructuring and reallocation of resources it's a war with frontline staff, two-tiered healthcare and all the usual suspects.

I won't go into details here, but my mom has been in the hospital for the past month or so. Watching this process playout and how things are handled is just plainly ridiculous. It's not a business (and nor should it be, for the record!), but if it were, there would be things that would happen just because it's sensible and would save that business a bunch of money. Instead, the way the system works now, it's just plain expensive and inefficient. With all the boomers aging, these issues are only going to get worse. We have to do something to fix these problems and try to reform this. But, to make this happen someone is going to have to spend a lot of political capital and ruffle a lot of feathers on the way.

And to be entirely clear and forthright, in "my" situation, the issue is not frontline staff. They've been great and there's no issue there. It's the system and the way it "functions". I'm pretty much convinced that if you ran a commission and asked these folks on the frontlines what could work better and how we could streamline things, they'd have the answers. I'm not entirely sure that some of the people higher up the food chain would want to hear it though.

I don't know if its the case than no one wants to hear it.. I think it is more the gigantic expense it would take to fix the systemic issues, that no one wants to take it on. We have a system that instead of having synergies, are a piecemeal of add-ons Frankenstein together.

You go into a hospital, and you can walk down three halls and feel like you are in 3 different decades. We went to go get some prenatal testing done at Lois Hole, and after checking in at the first desk, we had to check in again at the next desk because "the systems don't talk to each other". Like this is seriously 2022 with the largest organization in Alberta and the systems can't even communicate?

This isn't an easy fix, this isn't a cheap fix. But the real fix needed will take a decade or more and probably a lot more borrowing than any party is willing to admit to run a platform on. The reality is you can either pay more money yearly and keep the inefficient system in place, or spend a ####-tonne of money and political capital now for fixes that many Albertans won't even see.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by belsarius

I don't know if its the case than no one wants to hear it.. I think it is more the gigantic expense it would take to fix the systemic issues, that no one wants to take it on. We have a system that instead of having synergies, are a piecemeal of add-ons Frankenstein together.

You go into a hospital, and you can walk down three halls and feel like you are in 3 different decades. We went to go get some prenatal testing done at Lois Hole, and after checking in at the first desk, we had to check in again at the next desk because "the systems don't talk to each other". Like this is seriously 2022 with the largest organization in Alberta and the systems can't even communicate?

This isn't an easy fix, this isn't a cheap fix. But the real fix needed will take a decade or more and probably a lot more borrowing than any party is willing to admit to run a platform on. The reality is you can either pay more money yearly and keep the inefficient system in place, or spend a ####-tonne of money and political capital now for fixes that many Albertans won't even see.

I disagree. What we have is a crisis care system, not a health system. Everything is done at crisis levels, which means it all costs much more than it should. Easy fixes that can happen over short time periods would be things like increasing community and senior care. People who don't need to be in hospitals clog beds, with downstream effects all the way to paramedics and firefighters, just because there is no space for an elderly person to go. This is pretty well known, and has been for at least a decade. This will free up healthcare space and relieve pressure, reducing overtime. Yes, it will cost money(and the usual fools will scream bloody murder at the spending) but it will benefit the people needing out of hospital care(so we will see it ourselves) and reduced workloads and increased access to the ER is a benefit most Albertans will use at some point.

This isn't a "fix everything" solution, but it provides breathing room to really see where the issues are.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by belsarius

I don't know if its the case than no one wants to hear it.. I think it is more the gigantic expense it would take to fix the systemic issues, that no one wants to take it on. We have a system that instead of having synergies, are a piecemeal of add-ons Frankenstein together.

You go into a hospital, and you can walk down three halls and feel like you are in 3 different decades. We went to go get some prenatal testing done at Lois Hole, and after checking in at the first desk, we had to check in again at the next desk because "the systems don't talk to each other". Like this is seriously 2022 with the largest organization in Alberta and the systems can't even communicate?

This isn't an easy fix, this isn't a cheap fix. But the real fix needed will take a decade or more and probably a lot more borrowing than any party is willing to admit to run a platform on. The reality is you can either pay more money yearly and keep the inefficient system in place, or spend a ####-tonne of money and political capital now for fixes that many Albertans won't even see.

Nobody has the balls.

Whether its PC, NDP or UCP its just easier to throw money at a problem and hope it leaves you alone.

Nobody wants to put the work in.

And whats more fantastic about that is that people wax poetic about our Universal Healthcare System, but if we as a society dont buckle down and address some fundamental issues, this system will fail.

And its not going to happen as a slow, agonizing death, its going to happen overnight. One day they're not going to answer the phones anymore.

But you know what? I dont care anymore. I cant. For my entire adult life I attempted to be a rational, fiscally responsible individual that cared about the systems of our society and the people that depended on them. But nobody else seems to care anymore and after COVID I've effectively decided that fiscal responsibility in my lifetime is dead.

Sorry kids, you're going to inherit a wasteland. We blamed the boomers, you're going to blame us, but there still seems like plenty of road for that can to be kicked down.