Universal Care (Some Exceptions Apply)
My uncle, Harald Skjei, was born in 1899 and died from diabetes at the age of 14. A diagnosis of diabetes meant almost certain death before the historic work of Canadian doctors Frederick [...]
Greg Flanagan
Greg Flanagan
An Ounce of Prevention…
According to founder of Medicare Tommy Douglas’s original vision, healthcare in Canada “should be designed to keep people well—because in the long run it’s cheaper to keep people well than to [...]
Impaired Judgement
In the provincial referendum of 1923, following seven years of prohibition, Albertans voted for government control over liquor. They chose a distribution and sales system that promised to control [...]
Can Medicare Survive?
Nearly a decade ago, the Klein government initiated massive cuts to public services, including health care. Along with those cuts came other system changes, such as the replacement of more than [...]
Shifting the Burden
A radical proposal was quietly presented by then finance minister Stockwell Day with the 1999 budget. Titled “A New Tax Plan for Albertans,” the document proposed three major changes to Alberta [...]
Cutting Health Care:
Health care reforms have left almost 50 per cent of Albertans doubtful whether the system will be able to care for them when they need it. With hospital closures, backlogs in emergency wards, [...]
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Reducing the Harm
It's a little after 10 o’clock in the morning and Taylor feels like she’s climbing the walls.
When her name is called and the door to Lethbridge’s supervised drug consumption site buzzes open, Taylor moves quickly on her crutches. She settles into a chair at the second booth from the end ...
Should All Drugs Be Decriminalized?
Hakique Virani says yes.
Twelve-step addiction recovery programs teach that it is irrational to “do the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” This should be a lesson for legislators too. As the 4,000 Canadian families who lost a loved one to an opioid overdose last year know, our ...
Holy Healthcare
Just tell them we don’t have it here.” That’s what the nurse told me in Killam Hospital, an hour east of Camrose. I’d asked what would happen if a woman came into our ER asking for the morning-after pill. The nurse wasn’t being self-righteous, but simply explaining the policy.
As ...