Smith Just Exploded Alberta Health Care. What Comes Next?

Premier Danielle Smith’s declaration last week that she intended to blow up Alberta’s health-care system came 25 years after then-Alberta premier Ralph Klein literally blew up the Calgary General Hospital.

Klein’s demolition on Oct. 4, 1998, involved tonnes of explosives to bring down a health-care icon the government had declared too old, inefficient and expensive. Ten years after its destruction, however, Calgary was still short of hospital beds and emergency room capacity.

On the other hand, Smith’s announced demolition will be much less dramatic but will involve a massive, long-run restructuring of the province’s system and thus affect every Albertan, for better or worse.

Danielle Smith believes she's found the org chart that saves health care

If there was a health-care system structure that guaranteed better patient care, lower surgical wait times and impartial and accountable decision-making, then it would be in place everywhere.

But it's not.

British Columbia has five regional health authorities. Québec has 18. Ontario? It's somewhat complicated.

Alberta to dismantle current patient-care model, create new health delivery system

Alberta's government is dismantling its provincial health-care delivery organization into four entities in a sweeping overhaul that will change the structure and decision-making for the entire health system. 

Heralding it as a "new day for health care in Alberta," Premier Danielle Smith says dividing Alberta Health Services (AHS) into new agencies with a narrower focus, to be overseen by a council of politicians and senior government bureaucrats, will improve access to care in a system under strain.

Danielle Smith's pension trifecta: Trudeau, Notley and Poilievre agree on something

It's not clear if Pierre Poilievre had already devised a position on Alberta's proposed quitting of the Canada Pension Plan, but the Conservative leader issued one barely a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proclaimed his own stance.

The Liberals' unusually forceful opposition to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's pension ambition has doubled as a political wedge against Poilievre. Alongside trying to criticize the CPP-weakening gambit itself, Liberals applied pressure on Conservatives to squeeze their leader through one of three doors:

These Health Care Workers Spoke Out. Their Hospitals Fired Them

Jhonna Porter felt a duty to alert her co-workers to a potentially dangerous change on the fifth floor of Los Angeles’ West Hills Hospital. Without much notice, the administration had begun converting the floor into a COVID-19 unit on March 20.

“The rumors are true,” Porter, a registered nurse, wrote that evening in a private Facebook group used by the floor’s staff. “Be careful.” 

Porter, whose department usually works with cardiac patients, didn’t think the hospital was providing staff on the newly converted floor with adequate personal protection equipment. She posted a plea for donations on her personal Facebook page on March 24.

Seventy Top Health Care CEOs Raked in $9.8 Billion Since 2010

While the Senate GOP's plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been denounced as potentially devastating to the poor, the sick, women, people of color, children, and those with pre-existing conditions, a new analysis published Monday finds that no matter what happens, the CEOs of large healthcare companies are likely to continue living lavishly.

Since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed in 2010, the "CEOs of 70 of the largest U.S. healthcare companies cumulatively have earned $9.8 billion," according to a report by Axios's Bob Herman.

Democrats, Not Republicans, Stand for “Freedom” in Health Care

There was a moment, early in the House GOP’s secret health care deliberations, when they reportedly considered doing something fairly radical and—under different conditions—very good. In Republicans’ haste to repeal every tax in the Affordable Care Act, their budget lines were hemorrhaging revenue, leaving them torn between taking health care subsidies away from millions of poor and working class people or finding a new revenue stream to limit the insurance coverage loss their bill would cause.

America’s Biggest Publicly Funded, Fully Integrated Health-Care System Is Under Attack

In the Bay Area, public meetings critical of conservatives are not hard to find. But when about 200 San Francisco military veterans jammed into an auditorium in their city’s Veterans War Memorial Building in mid-April, they added diversity to the local “resistance.” Those in attendance—representatives of veterans-service organizations, patients of the Veterans Health Administration, health-policy experts, and local Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi—were trying to educate veterans and the public about proposals that could destroy a single-payer plan for 9 million Americans whose past military service, in combat and noncombat jobs, makes them eligible for VHA coverage.

Why Mitch McConnell and the Republicans Can’t Fix Health Care

Mitch McConnell’s decision to postpone a vote on his health-care-reform bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, is a political setback (and perhaps only a temporary one) for the Republican Party. But, beyond this week’s drama, the bill and its troubles reflect conservatism’s failure when it comes to thinking about health care.

Even if McConnell somehow manages to revive the bill in the coming weeks and put together the fifty votes that he needs to get it through the Senate, that broader failure will remain a problem for him and his party. If they end up passing this bill or something like it, they will be betting their future on a reform that cannot deliver what Donald Trump promised during the election campaign and what Paul Ryan and his colleagues promised last December: reasonably priced access to health care for every American. Over time, political pressure would mount for the restoration of Obamacare, or even for a public option available to everyone.

9 of the Most Staggeringly Awful Statements Republicans Have Made About Health Care Just This Year

In 2009, Rep. Alan Grayson characterized the Republican approach to health care as “don’t get sick, and if you do, die quickly.” Eight years later, the Florida Democrat’s words ring truer than ever, especially in light of the House's passage of the American Health Care Act.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would deprive 23 million of health insurance by 2026, resulting in substantial premium hikes and out-of-pocket expenses for older Americans and people with preexisting conditions. And the more Republicans are confronted with the devastating consequences of Trumpcare, the more evident it becomes how clueless they are on the Affordable Care Act specifically and health care more generally.

U.S. Health Care System Is Condemning Thousands of Americans to an Early Death

In his report, "This is how American health care kills people," Ryan Cooper tells the story of 29-year-old Matthew Stewart, who required emergency surgery for hepatitis-induced liver damage, but learned that only about $10,000 of his $74,000 bill was covered by his "gold plan" insurance policy, partly because of out-of-network rules even in emergencies.

When his insurance provider decided to quit the insurance exchange, Stewart was left without a liver specialist, and he couldn't obtain Medicaid because his state of Texas had refused the option to carry it. His alternative—declaring bankruptcy and leaving the state—would be delayed by a lengthy legal process exacerbated by the physical and mental stress of his illness. But the hospitals kept sending their bills.

Should the wealthy be allowed to buy their way to faster health care at private clinics?

A growing number of boutique medical clinics is establishing a second tier of health services that critics say encroaches on Ontario’s public health system by charging as much as $4,500 in annual fees for services such as no wait times, genetic analysis and added testing that isn’t always medically necessary.

A Toronto Star/Ryerson School of Journalism investigation documents a hybrid health-care regime that markets to a clientele who can access public health care while paying for services that reach beyond what is covered by OHIP, including 24/7 access to health-care professionals, fast-tracking of MRIs and a range of annual tests and lifestyle assessments.

Paul Ryan’s Health-Care Vise

If there is a single person who made Paul Ryan the Speaker of the House, it is probably Mark Meadows. Back in 2015, Meadows, a former restaurant owner who, in 2012, was elected to represent the most conservative district in North Carolina, set into motion the events that led to Speaker John Boehner’s resignation. Meadows, who had no legislative experience, filed an obscure parliamentary procedure known as a motion to vacate that would have forced a referendum on Boehner in the House. Boehner resigned rather than face the prospect of losing that vote, and Ryan emerged as the only Speaker candidate acceptable to all the factions of the House G.O.P.

GOP congressman thinks poor people don’t want health care, ‘just like Jesus said’

In an interview with STAT, Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS) says he doesn’t support Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion because he believes some poor people just don’t want health care.

“Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’” Marshall, a doctor and first-term congressman, said. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”

The author of the STAT piece, Lev Facher, writes that he “pressed” Marshall on that point. But the congressman “shrugged.”

Amid GOP Attacks on Health Care, the Movement for Single Payer Is Growing

Donna Smith has braved cancer, battled predatory insurance companies and fought relentlessly for health care reform for more than a decade. But she's not sure she'll survive the aftermath of Election Day.

"Every single morning since November 8, I sit and wonder if this will be the day that I have enough guts finally to end my life," she says.

'I was naive': after losing healthcare battle, factory workers fear next blow

Hard by the Hudson river about 14 miles north of Albany, the sprawling Momentive Performance Materials factory in Waterford has supplied generations of upstate New Yorkers with secure, well-paid, blue-collar jobs. Jobs that the US, and much of the industrialized world, has been losing and whose loss has set off a political time bomb. Now Momentive workers fear those jobs are gone.

Tennessee Republican writes off voters worried about health care as ‘extremists, kooks and radicals’

A Republican congressman who has served his district for almost thirty years is refusing to hold a town hall in his district because he has no interest in hearing from “extremists, kooks and radicals.”

Rep. John J. Duncan Jr (R-TN), who was first elected to Congress in 1988, wrote an email  saying he has “often been described as one of the most accessible members of Congress in this Country,” reports the Knoxville News Sentinel.  Despite that he has no interest now in holding a town hall meeting to discuss the incoming Trump administration and listen to constituents who want to discuss GOP alternatives to the Affordable Care Act.

Republican congressman sneaks away from constituents demanding health care answers

Congressman Mike Coffman (R-CO) tweeted Friday that he was excited to return home to Colorado this weekend, but things didn’t go very well when he got there.

On Saturday, his open meeting to chat with constituents at the Aurora Central Library was overwhelmed by voters particularly concerned about the fate of their health care if the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare) is repealed — a plan Coffman supports — without a replacement put in place. Rather than meet with most of them or even address them, he left the event via a back door and escaped in a waiting vehicle.

With Late Night Vote, GOP Takes Aim at Key Health Care Gains

Early Thursday, Senate Republicans took the first step toward repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, overcoming a slew of Democratic amendments meant to defend popular parts of the law and setting the stage for tens of millions of Americans to lose their health insurance.

The 51-48 vote, taken around 1 a.m., advances a budget resolution that instructs committees to write legislation stripping the health care law of its funding and spending provisions. It allows Congress to consider repeal legislation through the budget reconciliation process, requiring only a simple majority of 51 votes rather than the 60-vote supermajority required for most major bills and blocking the possibility of a Democratic filibuster.

Noam Chomsky: The US Health System Is an "International Scandal" -- and ACA Repeal Will Make It Worse

Changes are coming to America's health care system. Not long from now, the Affordable Care Act could be history. President-elect Donald Trump wants to repeal so-called Obamacare, although he is now urging Republicans to repeal and replace it at the same time. But replace it with what?

The political culture of the most powerful nation in the world is such that it vehemently defends the right of people to buy guns but opposes the right to free and decent health care for all its citizens. In all likelihood, the Trump health care plan will be one based on "free market principles." Under such a plan, as Noam Chomsky notes in the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows, poor people are likely to suffer most. In other words, the scandalous nature of the US health care system is bound to become even more scandalous in the Trump era. Welcome back to the future.