The ‘great fix’, an opinion on people’s lives

Written by ECA Review

Dear Editor,

As January starts to fade, it is time to reveal the lunatic policies that are destroying Alberta and a way of life. This in a country that should be great, Canada.

Let’s unveil the UCP’s hand at destroying an economy and a living for “everyone”.

Alberta citizens are receiving in the mail shiny expensive propaganda. Pamphlets to let us know how the new Premier is going to fix everything.

It’s called buying your votes with your own money.

Government doesn’t have their own money, it’s the people’s money. The same day I picked up my mail and got this shiny promise sheet saying how they were going to fix the healthcare system!

Alberta Health with the new Premier’s promise announced the closure of the Emergency Department at the Big Country Hospital in Oyen and more beds as well. This is a solution? “Not likely”.

Now as we should remember, there used to be a party called Conservative. They shut hospitals down in rural areas and turned some into senior centres.

Their strategy was to centralize the health care system and everything was going to be great because it saved operating these small hospitals.

So Calgary, Lethbridge, Red Deer, Medicine Hat and Edmonton would cover all excess operations, etc., etc..
Instead of specialized technicians coming to treat serious patients in all these areas, these sick patients were required to travel two hours, and up to four hours to get operations, treated and examined.

If it took you four hours to get a sick animal treated you would be jailed. So why are these government people not charged? It’s criminal.

Now we changed the name to UCP, which is supposed to blindside a percentage of people to forget. This is a big business practice; change names and people think it is a new company. And now because these big centres can’t take the surplus sick and the ambulance situation worsened, the solution is to close some more hospitals down and centralize the health system some more.

They cut the salaries of doctors, nurses and technicians and put more hours of work in every department and these people got other jobs to make a living.

Now the new Premier is going to get more ambulances for Calgary and Edmonton and get more paramedics and that way the Oyen ER can stay closed. First they should have extra doctors and all health care people in place as we don’t know what year they may find these people.

Now let’s understand that there are going to be people who have an accident or a major health issue and they will need medical emergency help. This is a fact of life.

Ten or 12 years ago I had a serious health issue on top of cancer surgery four months prior to this. I am half an hour drive to the Big County Hospital. A friend got me to the ER in 20 minutes and I was barely functioning. The doctor, nurses and other technicians stabilized me enough and I was able to get to ICU care.

I didn’t have a spare hour, 20 minutes was almost the end for me. Now we have no Emergency.

Our system was functional and was set up to take care of the citizens of Canada and Alberta. It didn’t need to be changed so some privileged people could get huge salaries and worse yet, disgusting bloated pensions.

Companies didn’t need to make huge profits on the backs of people’s lives. I write this because I have been on the front lines since the initial fight for life and I made it, I have had three minor issues and had to be stabilized in the local Emergency half an hour away.

Emergency was not available when I needed it this winter and I was advised to stay calm and take pain killers.

When an ambulance was available it could go to Hanna, Drumheller or Medicine Hat. Don’t bother, because no one has 1.5 to three hours. These other emergency centres are stressed with a situation of doctors and nurses unavailable because they quit or left Alberta with a health care system cut back to horrors.

People are scared in this community you can well imagine.

Arnold McKee,
Oyen, Alta.

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