Poor health

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This week, the Alberta Legislature resumes for a whole 10 days, and as usual, healthcare tops the agenda in Alberta and will dominate most question period repartees. At issue is the province’s recent award of a $1.5 million contract to Aon Consulting, a U.S.-based insurance giant. Aon is a company that profits from the sale of health insurance “products” in Canada—and they’ve been asked by the province to study whether selling more private healthcare insurance “products” is a good idea.

One can hardly fault insurance corporations for wanting to turn a buck. Making money off sick people is what they do for a living in the States, and getting their paws on the $90 billion Canadian governments spend annually on healthcare is their agenda. Fine. But Canadians have made it abundantly clear—through three decades of public opinion polls and election results—they think it’s the government’s job to ensure the private sector doesn’t take sick people to the cleaners.

Alberta is ignoring its clear public preference. They won’t say whether the contract they gave Aon contains a provision prohibiting Aon from profiting off a system they have a hand in designing, and what’s more, the public doesn’t have access to the contract at all; all we know is taxpayers are giving health profiteers $1.5 million for a study on how they can make money off our health system, and we’re not supposed to ask any more questions.

Underlying the Aon fiasco is the fact that private insurance adds costs to the healthcare system, in the form of a layer of profits and administration that public healthcare avoids. But it appears that Aon hasn’t been asked to compare the cost of allowing private insurance to what it costs to deliver the same services within Alberta’s public system. Aon’s been hired to do an actuarial analysis, and that type of work usually involves some kind of public sector comparator, meaning a comparison between the cost of going private rather than leaving things within the public system. No such luck with this study.

Aon’s secret study will form the basis of “analysis” on which the Alberta government is poised to launch phase two of the latest health privatization gambit: amending the law to allow private insurance in Spring 2006—ushering in an American-style system, where supplementary insurance means you can buy better care. Ready your jiffy markers and your witty slogans, because a healthcare protest is coming, within just a few months, to Legislature steps near you. V

Vuepoint

Poor health

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