Another kick at the cat

Lyle Oberg spoke to the Meridian Booster in Lloydminster quoting a 'recent government study' to promote the 'Healthcare is unsustainable' narrative.

The recent government study that indicated that health-care spending will take up about 60 per cent of the provincial budget by 2025 that Klein and Oberg have quoted recently, was the one by Aon Consulting, an American private insurance corporation. They based their past spending history on the last decade of spending.

Factoring in the severe cutbacks of the early 90's creates a very different picture.

They were also using Alberta Finance's revenue predictions. You know, the same ones that under-estimated revenues by forty billion dollars in just the last decade. Despite all these factors, Aon's report still said flatly that moving towards private insurance wouldn't create savings.

The steep spending curve that both Premier Klein and Mr Oberg warn of in their alarmist fashion is non-existent when healthcare spending is measured as a percentage of GDP. The private insurance model they favor would cost more. In the US it means administrative costs more than double those in Canada - moving towards the Private model at all means increasing costs.

The most increasingly expensive elements of our system are the private components, while the public component's costs remain stable. It seems counter-intuitive to expand the private rather than public share of the system.

The myth of unsustainability doesn't stand up to even the most basic scrutiny.