07) DUMP CORPORATE INSIDERS, SAYS FRIENDS OF MEDICARE

 

Special to PV

 

            Long regarded as one of Canada's wealthiest provinces, Alberta has also seen major health care cutbacks since the era of former premier Ralph Klein. Repeatedly the province's health system has been decentralized, centralized again, then decentralized, as local or central boards are created and abolished.

 

            Each time, the Conservative government's focus is on "administrative problems", not the fact that too few doctors, nurses and support staff arehired to work in hospitals and clinics.

 

            In the latest act of this drama, Health Minister Fred Horne axed the entire Alberta Health Services board on June 12, after AHS directors defied his orders to halt the payment of bonuses, worth $3.2 million, to 99 executives for 2012‑13. The directors argued that they were legally bound to pay these bonuses.

 

            According to Sandra Azocar, Executive Director of Friends of Medicare, "the question that Albertans should be asking is why the Premier and the Minister of Health do not read the employment contracts that are offered to Executives before hiring them? They are the ones that are ultimately responsible for the decisions that are being made regarding the use of our public health dollars.

 

            "Since prior to the inception of AHS Board, Friends of Medicare expressed concerns regarding the manner in which this super board was appointed. In our view, a voice for the public interest was always conspicuously absent. Also, there was very limited representation of actual health care workers and health expertise. With the future of Alberta's health care system at stake, these have been glaring omissions.

 

            Given the abrupt end to this costly experiment, says Azocar, "the issue is not the structure, it is the culture and expectations that this ideologically driven government has created within our health care system. AHS was created through an internal coup; its whole culture is corporate and secretive, driven by an undisclosed agenda. It discloses trivia on expenses but nothing on the allocation of $13 billion per year. It's privatizing without a mandate or public input.

 

            "What we need is REAL Local input into our health care, regardless of structure. REAL public discussion of agenda, and real disclosure of allocations of public health dollars. Let's reflect back on the Colonoscopy issue in Calgary or the Home Care contracts that were just awarded toToronto based companies, the ongoing aggressive privatization of seniors care. Everything about AHS's reaction showed a will to manage and minimize the issue, no sense at all that it was an ethical crisis.

 

            "Structure does not matter, culture does, and AHS and this government who holds the responsibility over our health care have been heading towards the wrong direction.

 

            "The ongoing financial mismanagement that we have seen over the years, has led to constant upheaval and costly reorganizations. Every time we need to reorganize the governance of our healthcare system we have seen millions of dollars being unnecessarily spent, and our health care thrown into chaos. We are constantly trying to change a tire on car that is upside down in a ditch."

 

            Friends of Medicare is demanding that the Minister of Health commit to a more transparent, accountable and democratic structure of governance of our healthcare system, "a structure that is no longer open to elitists, golden‑parachuting, corporate insiders."

 

 (The above article is from the July 1-31, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)