Entries tagged with
privatization
Red Flags
Smith, DynaLIFE, and the Precarious Future of Health Care in Alberta
When we as Albertans look back on what the labs rollercoaster has cost us — the hundreds of millions wasted, the generational damage to our health-care workforce, the erosion of trust in the delivery of a vital service — all of it may be dwarfed by the long-term damage being wrought to our health-care system in its name.
Danielle Smith tried — again — to blame AHS for the province’s health care woes. Alas (for her), hard data has a way of catching up with misleading statements. This article show how responsibility for the poor performance, high costs, and potential irregularities in Alberta’s surgical crisis sits squarely with the government.
As allegations of political interference and price gouging in private surgical contracts rock Alberta’s health-care system, a new report by Parkland Institute provides critical context, revealing how privatization has dramatically increased costs, undermined public hospitals, and prolonged wait times for critical surgeries.
Operation Profit
Private Surgical Contracts Deliver Higher Costs and Longer Waits
New data analyzed in this report shows that the costs of private surgical services under the Alberta Surgical Initiative have skyrocketed, even as patients face increasingly long waits — including for cancer and other critical surgeries. Meanwhile, Alberta is one of only three provinces where real per capita hospital spending has been steadily declining for the past decade.
Misleading Narratives
Pay-to-play queue-jumping won’t fix surgery wait times
This blog post critically responds to a recent Calgary Herald opinion piece on surgical wait times in Alberta. It shows how spending taxpayers’ money in private surgical centers not only failed to resolve the issue but also made it worse. The post also presents evidence-based solutions to reduce wait times in the public system.
Failing to Deliver
The Alberta Surgical Initiative and Declining Surgical Capacity
Through Freedom of Information requests, statistical analysis, and a review of the research literature, this report evaluates claims made by the Alberta government about the effectiveness of the Alberta Surgical Initiative in reducing wait times and the role of for-profit surgical outsourcing. Based on the research evidence, the report recommends that the provincial government shift away from for-profit surgical delivery and fully commit to public system improvement.
The UCP government is on a mission to change the landscape of higher education in Alberta. Cutting to the bone the operating budgets of universities and colleges is the most visible strategy used to advance their privatization agenda. But another front in this process—one that has been largely absent from the public debate—is how the UCP is aggressively using governance models in post-secondary institutions to transform them from within.
Higher Education - Corporate or Public?
How the UCP is Restructuring Post-Secondary Education in Alberta
The United Conservative Party (UCP) government has, from 2018 to 2022, cut the operating support budget for Alberta’s PSEIs by 18.8%, resulting in a trail of destruction across the province’s universities, colleges, and technical institutes. This report addresses two questions. First, we ask what the agenda and actions of the United Conservative Party government of Alberta mean for higher education and research. Second, we ask how institutional factors explain the sector’s lack of autonomy and ability to resist the corporatization agendas of governments.
A new report from Parkland Institute examines the UCP government’s privatization of Alberta’s medical lab services to DynaLIFE set to happen on July 1, 2022, as announced last week by Alberta Health Services (AHS). “The DynaLIFE deal rewards a large corporation and its shareholders over the current and long-term interests of Albertans,” says report author Rebecca Graff-McRae, a research manager at Parkland Institute. “It offers false economies, minimal savings, a smaller and demoralized workforce, a massive infrastructure deficit, and a fragmented system with little accountability.”
Misdiagnosis
Privatization and Disruption in Alberta’s Medical Laboratory Services
Drawing from financial data, lab professionals’ experiences, and hundreds of pages of files obtained through a freedom of information (FOIP) request, this report examines the serious implications of the UCP government’s plan to contract out the majority of Alberta’s medical lab services to a single for-profit corporation — DynaLIFE.