The share of provincial budgets consumed by health care will increase to an estimated 42.6 per cent by 2031.
health care reform
Private for-profit hospitals comprise 39 per cent of hospitals in Australia and 43 per cent in Germany.
Wait times remain a serious problem in all 10 provinces.
Federal regulations discourage provinces from emulating other countries that deliver universal health care without long wait times.
The idea that some Albertans might be getting their publicly-funded health care more rapidly than others because of who they happen to be, or who they know, or indeed if they have greater ability to pay, seems to have generated a fair amount of rage. Yet many of those who decry such queue jumping by elites and the politically connected are supporters of the current public monopoly in health care insurance and hospital care delivery, and it is this very structure and the rationing by waiting it entails that is to blame for the situation.