Alberta mulls new health-care funding strategy

Alberta Health Minister Ron Liepert says he's open to a new way of having Albertans pay for health care.

"I just think that we need to start having that discussion," Liepert said, "because I'm getting a significant number of letters from Albertans who are saying 'don't cut spending in health care, we'd like to pay something for health care' so I'm listening to them and we'll see where it goes."

The government has announced a series of cost-saving measures, from closing beds at hospitals to not filling hundreds of vacant positions, in a bid to deal with Alberta Health's $1.1-billion deficit, announced in June.

Liepert made the comments to reporters at the annual meeting of the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties on Thursday in Edmonton.

During the bear-pit session with conference delegates, Liepert was quizzed about the removal of health-care premiums in January 2009. That initiative was a Tory campaign promise from the provincial election in 2008.

"My criticism, I guess, is government policy," said Wayne Nixon, a councillor for the County of Stettler. "Every person that I've talked to thought that it was a reasonable premium for a pretty darn good service, which amounted to close to 10 per cent of your $11-billion budget."

"My view — do we have to look at some model going forward where there is greater attachment by the patient to the cost of health care?" Liepert responded.

"I firmly believe that, but if we do go that way we have to get it right. We can't just go back and do what we were doing under the old premium system because it wasn't working that well."  

Liepert said there are no immediate plans to introduce a new tax or a levy.