By not inflation proofing, health care gets sick, says HSAA

Don't believe Alberta's health-care budget brought bad news for the sick and injured? I can give you lots of reasons - $1.58 billion of them.

Yes, that's billion with a b. The budget not only gives figures for this year, it provides estimates for the next two years. In all those years the government plans to let health-care funding fall behind projected inflation and population growth.

I don't want to bury you with lots of numbers, but I think you'll find these fascinating - and frightening.

Health-care funding this year is $219 million short of matching last year's spending, plus inflation and population growth. Next year will see it fall another $516 million behind and the year after another $845 million. The total missing money for the period is $1.58 billion.

For more scary numbers, let's consider what might be missing along with the money.

Using Alberta Health Service (AHS) average labour costs, that money could pay for 1,207 front-line healthcare workers this year, an additional 1,267 next year and an extra 373 in the third year. That's a total of 2,846 full-time employees missing over three years. Just imagine the amount of health care that won't be provided by those missing caregivers.

Let's look at it another way. When AHS chairman Stephen Lockwood recently complained about the $200,000 cost of responding to freedom-of-information requests, he said that sum would pay for 14 hip operations.

That's a drop in the bucket compared to the more than 1,100 hips that might have been replaced if funding was allowed to keep pace with inflation and population growth.

How much will our population grow? By 258,000 in that three-year period.

That's the equivalent of a whole new city springing up - but without a single health-care dollar available to meet their needs.

It's not rocket science (or brain surgery) to figure out that more people means more demand for ambulances, hospital beds, knee surgeries, long-term care, X-rays, blood tests, physiotherapy etc.

The truth is that our health-care system is already strained. Anyone who has waited hours to get admitted to emergency or months for a medical test will tell you that. Therefore, anything less than matching inflation and population growth is a real cut. And when health funding is cut, patients bleed.

You simply cannot make the kinds of savings the government is proposing by seeking efficiencies in administration. Front-line care will be slashed and sick Albertans will be left wondering why there's no help for them.

Through their pain, they'll ask why Alberta is one of the wealthiest jurisdictions in the world and yet struggles to provide basic services.

Why? Because of decades of mismanagement. The government has sold off non-renewable resources owned by the people at fire-sale prices, allowing corporations to enjoy soaring profits while their tax rates were lowered. It has failed to meet its own royalty targets at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.

The corporate giveaways have been combined with equally foolhardy tax cuts for wealthy individuals.

The result has been an unfair shifting of the tax burden away from the corporations and on to the little guys, the rest of us hard-working Albertans.

Since 2011-2012, the largest contributor to government income has switched from non-renewable resource revenue to personal income taxes. The government predicts this pattern to continue for the next three years.

What this means is everyday Albertans are carrying more of the burden of paying for services, only to be told that those services must be cut.

Alberta's broken revenue system has led to the rollercoaster revenue ride that has devastated health care.

Funding is slashed, then increased in an attempt to catch up, then slashed again. The financial mismanagement has led to constant upheaval and costly reorganizations.

It's obvious that a predictable and sustainable funding model will save money in the long run. However, one more blip in oil prices is enough to get our government rushing back to the bad practices of the past. It cuts forecasted spending again, unconcerned about the chaos it will cause and the long-term costs it will add to health-care.

What those who have ordered these cuts fail to grasp is that we cannot "lay off" our patients or "downsize" the elderly.

Health care cannot be run like a business that must cut back when sales are down.

Albertans who need health care deserve to get it when they need it.

However, for the government it seems it's easier to get sick Albertans to pay for years of mismanagement by delaying or denying the treatment they need than to ask corporations and the wealthy to cough up their fair share.

How many sick and injured Albertans will be asked to pay the bill for decades of fiscal folly with their health or even their lives?