Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[ZedMan]

A grand total of 13 callers. ONE more supported leaving CPP vs not. Absolute dog#### title from the increasingly useless Herald.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by ZedMan

A grand total of 13 callers. ONE more supported leaving CPP vs not. Absolute dog#### title from the increasingly useless Herald.

You actually expected Yoho to read past the headline? We all know the li'l guy isn't the most literate.

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by rubecube

You actually expected Yoho to read past the headline? We all know the li'l guy isn't the most literate.

Literacy is for the elitist lefties

[Dion]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

There will always be the wing nuts who love Danielle and her radical policies and will support her tearing down our health-care system and leaving the CPP. Don’t get excited; they’re a small minority. There will be no APP.

The referendum is non binding and you should be worried. Unless there is a resounding note vote Smith will find a way to bring in the APP and claim Albertans voted for this.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by Dion

The referendum is non binding and you should be worried. Unless there is a resounding note vote Smith will find a way to bring in the APP and claim Albertans voted for this.

That’s not the only obstacle. If the tyrant tries that she’ll lose the next election over it. Then there’s the change of a leadership review with someone else at the helm. There won’t be an APP.

[curves2000]

I also doubt that there will be a APP as the logistics for Canadians who have left Alberta, those arriving to Alberta and more will be met with a lot of questions. There will most likely be significant pushback from strong, powerful employers who will question the judgement if affects recruitment and adds complexity to their operations. There isn't some massive request for people in Alberta to want nothing to do with Canada. This is a policy dream of a small, but loud and effective group who want's More Alberta and Less Ottawa policies. Some are legit, some absurd and some complicated.

As for the dismantling of AHS, more private options being paid for by the public dollar and more, there is a stronger appeal for more change than I think some people think.

There is a concern with some healthcare workers that AHS management has in essence been running it's own governance with little regard to what the public or what the government of the day wants. There are a LOT of protected employment jobs within AHS that people don't want to lose and have previously pushed back on reforms.

I don't know if these changes that Smith's government will result in anything significant, I really don't. I don't know what the answer is really but I do think this isn't just politics though. We have a serious healthcare concern and crisis in Canada and this goes across provinces and different left/right/center governments.

I have always thought that Canadian's have a very very strange ego when it comes to healthcare, we like to pride ourselves on this amazing system and think it's top notch, world class etc. It's the farthest thing from it. We are stuck in our own little silo cause we like to compare ourselves to the US and people who don't have medical insurance coverage.

[Faust]

Edmonton Journal

Alberta's pain medication pitch came too little, too late for other provinces: internal emails

https://x.com/edmontonjournal/status...990802515?s=61



Naheed Nenshi

What a debacle and a waste. They didn’t even try and sell the wrong dosage off brand Tylenol from Turkey until the problem was solved. When even your BFF Scott Moe is all “girl, noooo” you’ve made a massive error. I still want to know what lobbyists got rich over this.

https://x.com/nenshi/status/1725746840719765523?s=61

[Major Major]

"Getting things done."

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Dion

The referendum is non binding and you should be worried. Unless there is a resounding note vote Smith will find a way to bring in the APP and claim Albertans voted for this.

I think it's very unlikely they'll move forward if/when they lose the referendum on this.

They didn't on the time change issue and that vote was extremely close.

[puffnstuff]

Well there was no way for them to make money from the time change thing.

Unless there was some Big Clock Lobby that I missed hearing about

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by puffnstuff

Well there was no way for them to make money from the time change thing.

Unless there was some Big Clock Lobby that I missed hearing about

I'm sure they had their friend's army of consultants lined up for the $500M project to convert all of the government systems to the new timezone.

[MoneyGuy]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1725545403637273025

We voted for these idiots.

[Ozy_Flame]

I would like to see small pilot projects in different parts of Alberta that tests two systems - single-payer, private delivery healthcare, and the other does full public, extra funding, beefed up classic Canadian model. The purpose of this would be to see how these results would work in an Albertan context, and whether each of them (or neither of them) are sustainable.

Then, on completion, assess the benefits and the negatives, and try and put a system together that capitalizes on the good parts and adjusts the not-so-good parts.

Both pilots would be developed by neutral healthcare professionals and with input from economists, scientists, and the community for local specifications. Scientific methods would be at the absolute heart of both pilots.

I don't trust the UCP to actually execute a project properly (pilot projects are crucial to projects in my industry to determine if something can scale), but I think with ample funds to conduct both, it would be interesting to see.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

I would like to see small pilot projects in different parts of Alberta that tests two systems - single-payer, private delivery healthcare, and the other does full public, extra funding, beefed up classic Canadian model. The purpose of this would be to see how these results would work in an Albertan context, and whether each of them (or neither of them) are sustainable.

Then, on completion, assess the benefits and the negatives, and try and put a system together that capitalizes on the good parts and adjusts the not-so-good parts.

Both pilots would be developed by neutral healthcare professionals and with input from economists, scientists, and the community for local specifications. Scientific methods would be at the absolute heart of both pilots.

I don't trust the UCP to actually execute a project properly (pilot projects are crucial to projects in my industry to determine if something can scale), but I think with ample funds to conduct both, it would be interesting to see.

Experimenting on the populous like this is largely considered unethical. Especially with the opening hypothesis is that you will do harm to some.

And we don't really need to studies, the results are pretty clear, the cheapest most effective healthcare systems all generally look like; universal public funding, with high cost infrastructure investments owned by the government, and owner/operator frontline/preventative care delivery.

Many of the solutions are also fairly clear, but many of them are invest now to reap benefits in 10+ years; More educational spots, lighter education before specialization, cracking down on pseudo medical services draining resources and time from the system, clawing back on corporate ownership of clinics, government support to setup private delivery clinics where the owner is part of the day to day operation (maybe after x number of years working in a GP office or residency in Alberta).

There are also problems that aren't so clear, like how we can get doctors billing for outcomes instead how many patients they can rip through in an hour. But the solution we don't need is more corporate ownership of what should be public infrastructure. If you were going to run a trial, should be on solutions to billing for quality over quantity in front line care, but even that can't really be addressed until you solve the staffing shortage, by educating more doctors/nurses.

On the funding side, I things become a lot less clear, you can really mess around with things in a lot of different ways. Universal insurance premiums, consumption taxes, moderate front line user fees. In general with taxes, I am a big fan of taxing on the income side as soon as money is earned, some times taxing vices if there is a strong argument for the public benefit from those taxes, and leaving everything else alone. Then paying for everything out of general funds. I think the biggest problems in our tax system are the ways in which people can shelter or differ tax payments almost indefinitely (the government shouldn't be in the business of giving people with savings interest free loans), and the amount of red tape you would create for tax payers and the government to setup another system of collecting taxes. Given that a massive fraction of Alberta budget goes towards healthcare, you can't really talk about healthcare solutions without talking about how to get more out of your tax policy.

All of that said, I'm fairly sure that getting rid of 1 big bureaucracy in favour of a bunch of smaller fiefdoms is only going to throw fuel on the waste fire.
But I suspect that is the plan when the system you have is better than the system you want, you need to diminish what you have before pushing the change.

[Ironhorse]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

https://twitter.com/user/status/1725545403637273025

We voted for these idiots.

How did we vote for those idiots? This is parents being anti-vax morons.

[Yoho]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

https://twitter.com/user/status/1725545403637273025

We voted for these idiots.

You voted for measles deaths up world wide?

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by #-3

Experimenting on the populous like this is largely considered unethical. Especially with the opening hypothesis is that you will do harm to some.
.

When did I say there would be harm? What?

Sorry, but if you want change, you don't take an 'all or nothing' approach. Pilots exist for a reason, including in Canadian health systems and global health organization's.

Who considers it unethical? You?

[chedder]

Originally Posted by Ironhorse

How did we vote for those idiots? This is parents being anti-vax morons.

Alberta voted in anti-vax morons for a premier and government is what happened. Which, in turn, will bolden the anti-vax morons.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

When did I say there would be harm? What?

Sorry, but if you want change, you don't take an 'all or nothing' approach. Pilots exist for a reason, including in Canadian health systems and global health organization's.

Who considers it unethical? You?

If you setup one population to get what any reasonable person would expect to be a lower quality of care for the purpose of of experimentation, then you are going to do harm.

Furthering the privatization of health care in one pocket of Alberta will lead to a few things, first and foremost would be line jumpers from all over Alberta migrating to that region diminishing the capacity to provide public health care to others.

There is just no ethical way to run a privatization pilot regionally.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by chedder

Alberta voted in anti-vax morons for a premier and government is what happened. Which, in turn, will bolden the anti-vax morons.

“SeE wE wErE rIgHt!!”