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Just as a boxer can endure only so many uppercuts and body blows before wilting to the mat, so it is with government services that are continually pummelled by reorganizations and revamps.

In Alberta, the contest for most abused political punching bag is really no contest at all.

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For more than a decade, ever since Alberta Health Services was conceived, the health system has been subjected to a sadistic spree of commitments and cancellations, reversals and other upheaval — much of it dependant on who happens to be in charge of the legislature.

Just when you think a period of stability has arrived, along comes a new leader looking for a problem on which to impose a pre-conceived solution.

“Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked,” wrote author George Packer in a 2011 article in the New Yorker.

Nowhere has that sentiment been more fully expressed in Alberta than the provincial government’s merry-go-round approach to medical testing.