Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government Reorganizes to Further Privatize Health Care A Commentary

Abstract

Since the 1990s, Alberta has been a leader in attempting to reform its health care system. These reforms have largely focused on delivery of services and governance. Underpinning these policy changes has been a continuing effort to promote privatization in the health sector, an idea which can be defined as the results of a range of strategic choices: “increasing out-of-pocket payments for care, private ownership, for-profit methods, privatized care work, private responsibility, and private decision-making regarding the organization and delivery of health care” (Bryant and Raphael 2020, 137). While these efforts have been tempered over the years by political leadership and fluctuations in the provincial economy, the renewed push by the current United Conservative Party (UCP) government appears to be the most overt and aggressive effort since the Ralph Klein government of the 1990s. This article provides an update from a recently completed book about Alberta’s health care system (Church and Smith 2006; Church and Smith 2022). Much of the efforts of the current government have focused. [full text continues in PDF / HTML].