Letter: Health care should not be a choice it should be a priority

By Letter to the Editor on June 5, 2025.

Dear editor,

As the UCP government in Alberta seems to be making it easier for private health care to grab a foothold in Alberta, we at Palliser Friends of Medicare feel we should remind people that public health care better serves the public and is a more cost-effective way to run a provincial health-care system.

The Surgical Care Initiative, for instance, takes money and health-care workers, including surgeons and anesthetists, from the public system. Without these needed health-care workers in the public system, public operating rooms are often sitting empty when an emergency happens. Patients are put at risk, the health system is put at risk and so are Albertans.

Health-care workers, doctors, nurses and others are upset with the working conditions and are leaving our province more and more. Private clinics are being set up against the regulations of the Canada Health Act, and the federal government does not seem to want to act.

It is fine if you have a family doctor, or a nurse practitioner. It is fine if you have enough money. There are plenty of people who do not.

There is an affordability crisis in the world today, not just in Canada, and not just in Alberta. I remember in the 1980s when I did not have a drug plan. I had an income of $800 a month and had to pay $400 for my medication.

I am asthmatic. I had a choice between rent, food and breathing I chose breathing.

Health care should not have to be a choice.

Diane MacNaughton

Chair, Palliser Friends of Medicare

Redcliff

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