Bill 11, Alberta's controversial private medicine bill, seemed to fall off the radar screen after it became law last year. However, it was in the news again in the weeks leading up to Mar. 11, the day Alberta voters headed to the polls to anoint Ralph Klein's Tories to serve another term.
The Alberta Health Care Protection Act (Bill 11) drew massive media coverage across Canada before its passage last year (see CMAJ 2000;162:1606-7). The new law regulates how and when Alberta's publicly funded regional health authorities may contract with private clinics (“extended-stay nonhospital surgical facilities”) to perform surgical procedures requiring overnight stays.
Politicians, patients, physicians and the public hotly debated whether Bill 11 would open the doors to private hospitals and two-tier medicine. The bill's opponents argued that it would undermine not only Alberta's but also Canada's health care system and open the door to competition from the US.
The Liberals, led by former Tory health minister Nancy MacBeth, fired the first shot, using ads of their own to tell voters that the Conservative government had “blown $2.4 million of your money to sell their two-tier, private hospital scheme” by buying advertising. MacBeth promised that if her party was elected, its first act would be to repeal Bill 11.
“Repealing Bill 11 will allow new, stronger rules to be introduced to govern health care facilities, public and private, and will allow for proper conflict-of-interest rules,” MacBeth said.
Klein, meanwhile, hasn't wavered from the arguments he made when Bill 11 underwent third reading. He says the legislation creates “tight regulatory fences around surgical facilities, fences that weren't there before.”
Alberta's New Democrats also pledged to repeal Bill 11, with party leader Raj Pannu proposing a new “patient bill of rights” to replace it. “It will guarantee that Albertans get public health care in a publicly funded system," said Pannu.
Meanwhile, 2 of Bill 11's most vociferous opponents, Friends of Medicare spokesperson Christine Burdett and retired Calgary radiologist Harold Swanson, took their battle against the legislation straight to the polls. Burdett ran for the New Democrats, while Swanson faced off for the Liberals against Klein. Both lost.