Moving Beyond the Status Quo:
Alberta's "Working" Prescription for Health Care Reform
Data
Despite the federal government's numerous attempts to study health care, and the Ontario government's recent gesture to take the lead on this issue by calling for Ottawa and the provinces to begin a dialogue on health care reform, Alberta remains the leader in health care restructuring. When the Klein government embarked on its course of change, critics declared that Ralph Klein had signed his own political death warrant (Renouf, 1995). The critics, however, could not have been more wrong. Despite the controversy over health care, the most recent provincial election saw Premier Klein capture his third and largest majority government. Because of the achievements of the Klein government in health care reform, Alberta may well provide a useful case study for Canadians interested in fixing a system that is widely perceived to be broken.
The evidence is taken from four consecutive public opinion surveys—the 1995, 1996, 1999, and 2000 Alberta Advantage Surveys (AAS). The first two polls were conducted during the aftermath of the Klein government's initial budget cuts (in 1995 and 1996, respectively). The third survey was administered in January 1999, midway through the second electoral mandate and after the government had successfully eliminated the deficit, reduced the debt, and begun to increase expenditures. The most recent one was conducted in November 2000, after the controversy over Bill 11, but prior to the government's response to energy deregulation and energy rebates.
Each survey was administered by telephone to a random sample of slightly more than 1,000 Albertans. The margin of error for each respective study is approximately ±3%. Although these surveys are not panel studies where the same people are interviewed each time (a very expensive procedure), each questionnaire did contain several of the same questions. Thus, by comparing responses, it is possible to track aggregate public opinion over time.
The AAS are particularly useful in that they incorporate a variety of different measures designed specifically to probe people's attitudes toward the current health care system, its problems, and various prospective reforms. The majority of these indicators are comparable but are contained mainly in the 1999 and 2000 surveys; some indicators, however, extend as far back as 1995.
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