De Facto Two-Tier Healthcare

Alberta always a hotbed of innovation, has secretly developed a two tier parallel healthcare system for the elites, that Ralph Klein spent years trying to create in law.

But hey maybe that's a little harsh.  Just because elite private clinic  patients paying $10,000 a year (for better magazines in the waiting room?) were getting tests in weeks the general public was waiting months or years for doesn't mean anything unsavory was going on.

And if you believe that then I'm sure the Conservative Party appreciates your support because clearly you'll fall for anything.

Staff of a Calgary private medical clinic that is the focus of allegations of queue jumping told a provincial inquiry on Tuesday that its patients, who each paid up to $10,000 a year for care, were not buying special access to the public health system.

Witnesses have told the inquiry that patients from Helios Wellness Centre routinely got access within weeks to colonoscopies at Calgary’s publicly funded Forzani & MacPhail Colon Cancer Screening Centre while the general public waited years for the same tests. One witness testified that a Helios doctor told him during a tour of the private clinic that it was set up as a “reward” for well-heeled donors to the University of Calgary.

The next time one of your family or loved ones cant get the test they need to save their life, remember the elites avoid the pain they have inflicted through mismanagement and chronic underfunding of the Alberta public sector by breaking the rules designed to ensure fair access to the health system they are undermining.