Western Standard - April 05, 2022


MORGAN： Dr. Yiu’s firing isn’t a bad move, it’s a good start


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

190.5827

Word count

1,136

Sentence count

76

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Dr. Verna Yu was the head of Alberta Health Services, the province's largest and most important health care provider. She was fired by the NDP for her failure to deliver on a promise to fix Alberta's broken healthcare system.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 Today, it's sort of celebratory. I'm seeing what I feel is a good development in healthcare.
00:00:06.220 The NDP, on the other hand, are predictably apoplectic with the firing of Alberta Health
00:00:11.640 Services CEO, Dr. Verna Yu. Yu was, after all, one of the last senior NDP appointees remaining
00:00:18.500 in the civil service. So it's predictable as well that the NDP is claiming that the termination of
00:00:23.840 Yu heralds the beginning of a push to make dramatic changes within the Alberta healthcare
00:00:27.720 system. I can only say I hope so. Let's begin with Dr. Yu herself. I mean, in light of having gone
00:00:33.880 through the biggest healthcare challenge the system has seen in generations, how is Dr. Yu's
00:00:38.440 performance measured up? I think it's safe to say we haven't gotten our $677,000 per year
00:00:44.920 worth of value out of Dr. Yu, to say the least. I mean, any manager can be forgiven for being caught
00:00:51.120 flat-footed by the pandemic at the start of 2020. It was an unprecedented event. We didn't know what
00:00:56.040 we were in for, and the world was in a panic. What was Dr. Yu's excuse, though, for the performance
00:01:00.560 of the Alberta Health System at the start of 2022? I mean, we had two years of pandemic experience
00:01:05.600 under our belts by then. Why is it that a healthcare system in a province of 4.4 million people
00:01:10.440 was apparently brought to the edge of collapse by a mere hundred and some people in intensive care?
00:01:17.080 We can't pretend the province's healthcare vulnerability was due to a lack of funding.
00:01:21.660 Alberta was already spending as much or more per capita on healthcare than most of the
00:01:25.400 jurisdictions on earth. Billions more in funding was injected into the system in response to the
00:01:30.320 COVID-19 pandemic. With tens of thousands of procedures also being deferred, the health system
00:01:35.560 was flush with more cash than it's ever had before. So if it's a lack of funding isn't causing the
00:01:41.660 weakness in the healthcare system, the culprit has to be either bad management or the system itself.
00:01:46.600 Well, actually, it's both. Alberta's healthcare system is suffering under bad management,
00:01:50.800 ideologically beholden to a broken system. Starting with the management, though. Dr. Yu,
00:01:56.180 as I said, had two years and billions of extra dollars to work with in preparing the healthcare
00:01:59.820 system to withstand pandemic waves. As far as we can see, she did absolutely nothing with those
00:02:04.440 dollars. The ways that the system's responding to the pandemic today is just the way it did two
00:02:08.940 years ago. At a price of nearly $700,000 per year, I would expect a manager capable of addressing
00:02:14.240 changes and challenges to the system under her care. The problem is, Dr. Yu is an adherent to
00:02:20.420 the Canadian healthcare religion. The prime tenet of that faith is that nothing aside from funding
00:02:25.840 increases shall ever be applied to the system. The system is the model of perfection, and it's
00:02:30.720 blasphemy to even consider changing its sublime infallibility. The NDP are the high priests of this
00:02:38.320 religion, by the way. Thus, they ensured they were appointing a stringent disciple of it when they chose
00:02:42.620 Dr. Yu to be at the head of the sacred system. As far as the NDP is concerned, they chose well,
00:02:47.840 as Yu did indeed change nothing. Alberta isn't alone. Six out of ten provinces in Canada haven't
00:02:53.520 managed to increase their ICU capacity in the last two years, despite all of them increasing health
00:02:58.120 spending. And that brings us to the system. Despite Canadian mythology claiming otherwise,
00:03:04.560 Canada has one of the most rigid and inefficient healthcare systems on earth. While spending continues
00:03:09.380 to increase, waiting lists continue to get longer, and positive outcomes are waning. We're not getting
00:03:14.480 a good bang for our buck when we're measured against most of the developed nations in the world.
00:03:19.340 It's hard to fault Canadians for clinging to Canada's system, despite its ever more evident shortcomings.
00:03:24.300 I mean, we've been programmed to believe it's the best on earth for decades. The CBC created a series
00:03:29.380 in 2004. It was tasked with identifying the greatest Canadian of all time. With weeks of episodes and
00:03:35.540 carefully crafted discussions, it was concluded that NDP founder Tommy Douglas was indeed Canada's
00:03:41.040 greatest Canadian of all time, because he created our current healthcare system.
00:03:46.840 Douglas was formally canonized by the state broadcaster, and is considered blasphemy to question
00:03:51.620 his holy creation. We have to break through the spiritual fervor of those defending Canada's broken
00:03:56.300 system, though, and pursue some real reforms. There's hundreds of healthcare systems around the
00:04:01.140 world, and many of them are outperforming Canada's. In fact, most of them are. We need to examine the
00:04:05.860 best of these systems and emulate them. One common denominator in every system superior to Canada is
00:04:10.680 they all have more private involvement in the provision of healthcare and allow for more patient choice.
00:04:16.400 Now, private provision of healthcare is not sacrilegious. We need to focus on outcomes for patients
00:04:22.060 rather than a misguided fixation on a fully socialized system. I couldn't care less about
00:04:27.780 the American system, by the way. People like to point south of the border at the USA and use their
00:04:32.520 system as some sort of bogeyman. Healthcare zealots will righteously howl that we'll surely become just 0.81
00:04:37.280 like the Americans if we dare change any aspect of the Canadian system. Ah, that's a load of bunk.
00:04:42.060 When somebody makes that claim, all it proves is they've fervently closed their mind to rational and
00:04:47.120 productive discussion on healthcare reform. As with Canada, the American system is just one among
00:04:52.320 hundreds. Universality is the principle most people agree upon maintaining. Nobody wants to see a
00:04:58.120 person turned away from care due to lack of funds or wants to imagine a person being bankrupted from
00:05:03.980 paying for essential care. Universality is maintained in most of the system superior to Canada's while
00:05:10.200 allowing for competition and private involvement in the healthcare provision. Private provision options
00:05:15.960 and universal care are not mutually exclusive things. And that myth is another one of the ones
00:05:20.680 that needs busting. Healthcare always sits at the top of the polls among issues concerning Canadians,
00:05:26.440 but we've been programmed to avoid any critical discussion on how to improve it. The firing of Dr.
00:05:31.880 Werner Yu isn't a sign of an attack on universal healthcare, though there's some doctors and NDP
00:05:36.920 folks claiming that right now. It's an indication of a government, though, beginning to embrace the need
00:05:42.040 and agenda of reforming a broken system. I mean, turfing you in itself won't solve Alberta's healthcare 0.97
00:05:47.640 woes. It is a good start, though, and it signals that nobody's role or position is sacred,
00:05:52.520 and the government has finally started at the top. Let's hope they continue with it.