The Alberta government through the Minister of Health and Wellness just introduced Bill 48 today, Crown’s Right of Recovery Act. It is a great move and aimed at enabling the province to recover health costs incurred in a number of situations. They include car accidents but the law will use a wrongdoer’s insurance to recover health costs. That could get complicated in how to calculate the health costs associated.
The essence of the Bill is in section 2(1) that says in effect if someone receives health services for personal injuries due to wrongful acts or omission of a wrongdoer, the province then has the right to recover the health care costs, both current and future costs, from the wrongdoer. If someone, who is a victim receiving care due and contributory negligent, the wrongdoer is off the hook for that portion of the health care costs the victim is responsible for.
Bill 48 deals with convicted criminals who are hurt in committing a crime. They will be paying their health care costs. And it also goes after the tobacco industry to recover the health costs associated with the damage done by their products. The tobacco sections are very complex and I will need more time to study and digest what they mean and if second hand smoke is involved too. Overall - Wow! As a citizen and taxpayer, on first blush, I'm loving this Bill.
The province makes a direct claim for recovery of health care costs against tobacco companies so the patient is not involved in any messy litigation. The province looks like it is actually pursuing the tobacco companies on an aggregated basis to recover all health costs caused by and associated with tobacco produces. With tobacco, it looks like it is not dealt with on case by case approach but in the aggregate. That is smart.
Lots of detail to consider here but this is a great step in the right direction. It was impossible to get the Klein government to accept a ban on smoking in public and work places. There were numerous tries and all were rebuffed by Ralph Klein. That smoking ban was finally accomplished by Dave Hancock when he was Minister of Health and Wellness in the first Stelmach government.
His good work is being carried on by the current Minister, Ron Liepert. Full disclosure, I worked with a consortium of health professionals and advocacy groups to get the smoking ban in Alberta last year. There are lots on blog post in the archives if you want to know more about that initiative.
Bill 44 sucks but Bill 48 makes great sense.
Moronic proposals. They'll never be able to tie a person's lung cancer costs to a specific tobacco company. What would the government do, call witnesses for every lung cancer death to find out that "Joe was always a Marlboro man." ??
ReplyDeleteInstead of cheerleading these distractionary gimmicks you should reflect on the fact that the PCs are moving further down the "healthcare is a service we will bill for" model. Sure, these initial forays are designed to look good, but the reality is they are a beachhead towards outright privatization.
Also, once a generation of Albertans have been educated in a post-Bill 44 province how will they know that smoking leads to cancer? There's nothing in the bible that tells us that.
Superficially, this doesn't sound all that bad. But...there is an issue - how much of our health care dollars are going to now get sucked up by lawyers in cases that will last years, if not decades before any revenue is realized?
ReplyDeleteThe Stelmach government is moving down a path here where they are downloading the direct costs to the end user by delisting services, and then they are trying to bolster revenues with lawsuits. (Sounds a little like the recording industry to me)
Because this government has lost sight of the shared cost model that public health care presents, they are now looking at everything as if it should be a profit making venture, and that's a very uncomfortable place for public health care to end up.
They are currently going after what are "obvious causes". But consider the logical extensions of what they are doing with criminals. What's next? Am I going to find that treatment for high blood pressure is delisted because "I didn't exercise enough" or some other excuse?
Dear Commenters - read the Bill - it will clarify the concerns you have.
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