Citizens Share Their Opinions on Privatization of Health Care

Citizens Share Their Opinions on Privatization of Health Care

Rosanne Fortier News Correspondent

An article by Janet French on CBC News stated Private Member’s Bill 204, the Voluntary Blood Donations Repeal Act, if approved by MLAs as currently written would allow private companies to give money to blood plasma donors in Alberta.

Another article in Global News stated the United Conservative Party government said to meet its goal to reduce surgical wait times; it will speed up the process to get a private surgical clinic approved in Alberta.

When I asked some of the citizens of Vegreville what they thought of privatization of health care in the areas of paying blood plasma donors or having private surgical clinics available in Alberta to reduce surgical wait times, I received different responses.

Gordon Miller said he didn’t really have an answer for paying blood plasma donors because he is not aware of that. “But when I think about it, I am not in favour of paying blood plasma donors, but I am 87 years old and I am not aware of all the current situations. But in principle, I do not believe in that.”

However, Miller went on to say he was totally in favor of having private surgical clinics to speed up surgical wait times. “Alberta has a very good professional health care service between the professional people, medical people, and the government elected people and the people who work in the many health care departments. I am sure they can work something out. But when we have such a demand for services, if people have money and they can afford to pay, they should be able to go and pay and get the surgery done. In my view, this will speed up the service for everyone because it will take so many people out of the system because there are people with money who can afford to pay for those services. Having money is not a bad thing; they earned that money. If they have been able to be successful and had some opportunities to earn money, that is good. But I am still absolutely in favor of public health care service but to complement public service, to have some fees for services is fine,” Gordon Miller said.

Harry Babchuk said he thinks privatization of health care in any way is completely wrong. “I think society needs to have public health care and it shouldn’t matter how much money you have to determine the quality of health care you get. It is the responsibility of society as a whole to make sure that whoever gets sick or injured has access to health care. This is not an issue that someone should get rich on. If you want to see some information on how good private health care is, look up the stats on where the United States is compared to those countries that have universal health care. As for paying people to donate blood plasma, I feel we have not been paid to donate our blood before. I donated blood; I did not expect to get paid for it because you never know when you will need blood, and if you get paid for blood plasma that means whoever is paying you for the blood plasma, they will then sell it to those people who need blood plasma and that is just not right.”

To date, surgeries performed in private clinics will be public funded.