Five years ago, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was already gaming out how to dismantle public medicare, discussing how to get the federal government “out of the business of health care.”
In an episode of a podcast she hosted in 2021 for right-wing think tank the Fraser Institute, she mused about how she could build a parallel for-profit system—even if it involved breaking Canada’s foundational health care laws.
“You can tell me if our starting point needs to be throwing out the Canada Health Act,” she told her guest, the Fraser Institute’s senior fellow on health policy Nadeem Esmail.
Premier Smith's idea is broke as a fuckin' joke. It's always going to be in the best interests of the feds to ensure a healthy workforce because that's how the government gets funded! The feds will always have the best bargaining power to negotiate deals with providers and drug companies because they have the population of the whole damn country as their subscriber base. Privatizing health insurance only adds a layer of middlemen without any medical training as gatekeepers to essential medical services.
Who the fuck is supporting her in this, and who do they expect to cover their health care costs?!
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